Scripture Reading Project

I have recently embarked on a Bible reading cycle that involves reading through the assigned Torah and Haftorah readings from a standard Jewish reading cycle and reading through the Revised Common Lectionary portions. I’ll try to explain what those two cycles are in a later post. First my motivations for doing this:

Several months ago, I attended the Senior Pastor’s Luncheon. This is a gathering of pastors in Arlington who meet once a month for prayer, support, and networking. For the most part, these are ministers who do not desire to be a part of Arlington Ministerial Association. They are entirely protestant and largely evangelical (probably entirely evangelical). Needless to say, I have not made it a habit of attending in part because they were established as the alternative to an organization I was trying to sustain, in part because I didn’t know anyone, and in part because I’m busy. But, I decided to suck it up and go.

The conversation the day I went was on pastoral burnout. We got to discussing signs that we are burning out. One minister said that he knew if he preached from the same biblical text more than twice in a five year period that there was something wrong. It was his standard for himself. I don’t think it should necessarily be adopted by anyone else (nor rejected for that matter). The point I took from his comment was that when we return time and time again to the same biblical texts it may be a sign that something is missing.

On a side note, we would all agree that our personal psychological condition—whether we are in burn out, close to burn out, or feeling whole—does indeed influence our ability to do ministry. But this was the first time that I had ever heard anyone pinpoint selection of biblical texts for preaching as the place where that influence might be felt.

Needless to say the comment stuck with me more than anything else in the day’s conversation which I must admit was better than I thought it would be. Though I love scripture I’m quite guilty of relying too heavily on particular biblical texts to the exclusion of other texts. So in an intentional effort to expand both spiritually and as a pastor, I have decided to undertake this process of reading. Unlike a reading plan that would move systematically through the scriptures canonically, I have chosen these two patterned readings for liturgical and theological reasons. Both the weekly parshot ha-shauva or parshot as I’ll refer to it and the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) selections were made for worshiping communities. And both the Jewish parshot and RCL readings at least attempt an intertextual dialogue. For commentary on the weekly Torah reading see Jewish Theological Seminary's website. And for helpful resources for the Revised Common Lectionary, see Vanderbilt's lectionary site.