“Publish or Perish” is an expression often heard in the academic community to describe the pressure many scholars and researchers feel. They are expected to submit articles, research results, and more to appropriate academic publications as part of advancing in their careers, achieving tenure, or perhaps justifying receiving grants and funding. (see article on Wikipedia.)
However, I want to use this saying in a different way unrelated to the above. I realized early in my preaching and teaching ministry that the moment I stepped away from the pulpit or classroom podium, almost everything I had said was lost forever! I had entrusted my spoken message to the fallible memories of my audience, and the vast majority of what was said would no longer be remembered even one week later! Those who said, “Great lesson, preacher” on Sunday morning could seldom remember the main points by Sunday night.
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One wonderful way of preaching or teaching a series from Scripture is through presenting “mini-biographies” of lesser known Biblical characters. Now, doing extended studies on the major characters – Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, and such – is certainly rewarding as well. But the major characters have many chapters in the Scriptures devoted to them and are usually already well-known to our hearers.
In 2011 at the Tanglewood Church of Christ in Odessa, Texas we presented a 38 lesson series on the apostle Paul, entitled, “I, Paul: The Life of the Great Apostle.” It was a comprehensive and in-depth examination of the historical record of the New Testament, plus the cultural and historical background, together with Paul’s writings – all woven into a narrative of his life (as much as we can know of it) from birth to death.
In the Winter 2008 term at Sunset International Bible Institute, I taught the “Effective Bible Study” course to 49 students. MP3 files of all 13 class sessions are now available to listen to or download without charge by clicking on the link below. All handouts and presentation materials used in the class are also available for download or viewing. If you would like to have a copy of all the MP3 files, handouts, and presentation materials shipped to you on CD for use on your computer, you may order this series through our store.
In doing a series of lessons a few years ago on the city of Jerusalem as it appears through the Bible, I cast a wide net to find resources of a historical, geographical, and archaeological nature concerning this great city of the Old and New Testament period. One very valuable resource was a free (for download in PDF format) 250 page book written by Galyn Wiemers at 
Perhaps my favorite illustration of the work involved in effective Bible study is a story dating from the 1850s. It is called, “The Student, the Fish, and Agassiz.” Dr. Louis Agassiz (see 
The Book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament provides a first-hand account of the death throes of the nation of Judah as it struggled against the judgment of Jehovah before succumbing to the might of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire in 587-586 BC. It is the second longest book in the Bible, just behind the Psalms in size. We have available two separate series I taught on Jeremiah.
