Handling grief
Bible stories are read so often in church that people stop listening. It is assumed that nothing more is to be heard, that nothing more can be learned. Maybe the problem arises from discontinuity, breaking the material up into chapters and verses, reading so much and then stopping until next Sunday, instead of reading it as you would any other story.
John the Baptist is killed by henchmen of the vicious thug Herod, the consequence of a drunken whim. Many people without the slightest church connection will know the story; …