From the field: Text-driven church

June 2025

Before beginning my first pastorate, I was blessed with personally being taught text-driven preaching by multiple text-driven preachers. I learned that the shape of Scripture determines the shape of a sermon. I learned that the substance, structure, and spirit of a text determine everything about a sermon. I often heard textus rex and “We don’t preach sermons, we preach texts.” Yet, none of these is the most important thing I learned about text-driven preaching. The most important thing I learned was first from Dr. Timothy Pigg, pastor of Fellowship Church in Southwest Florida: Text-Driven preaching isn’t a style of preaching, it’s a theology of preaching. At the center of Text-Driven preaching is the belief that what God has to say is more important to a church than what any preacher has to say. What I learned was that the word of God changes lives, not the words of Klayton. What I learned was that I have nothing to offer anyone, but God’s word has something to offer everyone.

I began my first pastorate in December of 2024. The Lord’s providential hand was evident in the process of becoming the pastor of Range Hills Baptist Church. For the first time, I was responsible for caring for God’s sheep. As I sat in my first pastoral office, I remembered what I learned from text-driven preaching: I have nothing to offer anyone, but God’s word does. In my preaching and teaching ministry, I began to think about how I can give the absolute most of Scripture and the absolute least of Klayton. In my preaching calendar, I rotate the three major genres. Range Hills begins and ends each service with a reading from Scripture. The first Sunday evening service series was on how to study the Bible. My hope is that if I give as much Scripture as possible, my youthful inexperience as a first time pastor would be overcome by the sufficiency of Scripture. Yet, when I have 15, 30, and 50 years of pastoral ministry under my belt, I’ll still remember that I have nothing to offer anyone, but the word of God does.

How text-driven can a church be? That’s the question I’ve asked myself often. When Dr. Allen coined the phrase “text-driven,” he did so in the context of preaching, yet he created a phrase that describes what a church and a Christian should be. If a church and a Christian are truly and robustly text-driven, then God will be pleased and His work will be done.

Klayton Carson

Pastor

Range Hills Baptist Church