Which books in the Bible are the most popular for preachers? A website called CrossPreach has taken some 127,000 sermons recorded and available on MP3s from over 600 churches, and counted how many times from which book of the Bible the basic text was taken.
The sample
The participating churches were assessed by a researcher in the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) and were judged to be ‘mostly evangelical’. The sermons were preached by a total of 9,500 different preachers, so this is a very fair sample of sermons, with an average of 13 sermons per preacher. However, one feature was immediately noticeable – over two-fifths of sermons, 43%, had no specific text which was being explained, so were presumably talks on particular topics rather than expositions. It would have been very interesting to have had an analysis of the 55,000 topics preached upon, but the website doesn’t give this. However, that still leaves 72,000 sermons taken at random, which is a good sample.
It would also be interesting to have had an analysis of how many preachers work through a book (as did Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones) and therefore preach more on a passage than a single text, but again this was not given on the website.
Of these 72,000, 50,000 were based on a NT text (69%) and the other 22,000 on an OT one (31%). Given that the NT is one-third the length of the OT (249 pages in my Bible to 815, 23% to 77%), this means that two-thirds of text-based sermons are based on only a quarter of the available material or scriptures.
Gospels all in the NT top five
Which book was preached the most? In the NT that honour goes to Luke, 13% of the total, followed by John and Matthew, both at 12%. With Mark and Acts both at 7%, that means half of NT sermons come from the Gospels and Acts. One third of NT sermons are from one of Paul’s letters (Romans being the most, followed by Ephesians, both at 6%), and of the remaining 16%, Hebrews takes 4%, Revelation and 1 Peter 3% each, and the remaining books the rest. In summary therefore that makes half from the Gospels/Acts, a third from Paul and a sixth from the rest.
Psalms chart topper of OT
In the Old Testament, the top book for preaching purposes is the Psalms, one fifth or 19%, followed by Genesis 13%, Isaiah 9% and Exodus at 8%. So four books account for half the OT texts! Including Isaiah, the prophets are 27% of the total (major 16%, minor 11%). The Pentateuch, including Genesis and Exodus, was 26% of the total, a quarter. The historical books (taken as Joshua to Esther) were 22%, and the remaining books, Job to Song of Songs, were 25%. This divides the OT into four more or less equally represented groups in this sample of sermons preached: The Beginnings (the Pentateuch), History, Poetry (or Writings) and Prophets.
It would be interesting to take a note of the sermons one actually hears in the course of a year and then fit the proportions into the groupings given above to see how average is the teaching we individually actually get! We could then read/study for ourselves those books which were missing from our diet.
Further research
Crossway conducted a similar survey on which sections of the Bible were most read, and which readers found the hardest to understand. The percentages given have been grossed up to 100% and are shown in the pie charts, along with the figures given above.
These charts show that only for the Gospels and Acts are the figures balanced – read and preached most often and most readily understood. The Prophets show the greatest differentiation in their figures – read least, hardest to understand and explained only 8% of the time. The Pentateuch and Historical books are also read least, but are understood more readily, though even here more preaching/ help would probably be appreciated.
What is not displayed in these charts is any idea of ‘self-help’ – how much daily notes are used, study Bibles, or commentaries and like material, or what kind of percentages a similar survey of Bible Study groups would engender.
There is another item which ideally should also be added – what should be the amount of attention we give to each part of the Scriptures? Is the NT three times more important for our daily living than the OT, for example? Balance this with the fact that Jesus and the NT writers frequently quoted and applied the OT scriptures, even those we tend to overlook, and perhaps our emphasis calls for some re-adjustment!
Sources: www.fiec.org.uk/what-we-do/strand/C2 article by Oli Tucker; www.crosspreach.com, accessed February; article in Answers Nov-Dec 2018, Vol 13, No 6, p 13.
