The Better Style

 The problem with expository preaching is that you run out of Bible stories and Bible characters very fast. If you want to preach on marriage, you pool of Bible marriages is very small. If you want to preach on church planting, you have almost no Bible examples to use. The Bible is God's self revelation to mankind. It has a lot of important and useful information on how to serve the Lord. But is you preach in the same church for a long time you will begin to repeat some stories.

Topical preaching is much more useful to ministering the whole counsel of God. The preacher is inspired to preach on something. He finds out by study what the Bible says about that topic. He is not expounding on a particular verse. He is exhorting on a specific subject. You can cover a lot more ground with topical preaching.

I have heard both styles many times. I prefer topical over expository for preaching. Adult Sunday School may be a place to expound on the Scriptures verse by verse. But a sermon will connect better to a modern audience if you do not bog down explaining how people in ancient times lived and served.

Pastor Mitchell was a topical preacher. He could, and did, preach on anything. Even if he read a text and then never mentioned it again. Pastor Mitchell was a reader. He studied the Bible.