I once attended a church in California where the pastor spent over 7 years going through Romans. Being a guy who loves details, I thought it was great. But the one thing I never came away with was the big picture. There were all kinds of details, but the pastor had never put all the pieces together into a meaningful whole. Today, we use discourse analysis to help us discover the author's overriding purpose in writing. Thus, when I teach Greek 3 (syntax and exegesis), the class always works through an entire book of the New Testament so we can learn how to discern the theme of that book. If you're interested, I've applied this method to Paul's letter to the Philippians. But the same principle applies to every book in the Bible.
Happy Bible study!
