My Sermon Prep Idea

9

In my 27 years as a pastor, I am fairly sure that I never came up with any distinctively new approaches to sermonizing. However, somewhere along the way I developed one practice that, as often as I used it, always served me well. Before I describe it, I should say that it rests upon two assumptions.1) You don’t know at the first of the week what you’ll need at the end of the week.
2) The things you’re going to need are all around you every day.Unstated underneath that is the assumption that you know what you plan to preach next Sunday and that you have a basic method for doing sermon preparation–study of the text, forming a theme, developing an outline, and so on. My idea doesn’t fit into those categories. It really has to do with the broad category of sermon illustration. By that I don’t simply mean stories or poems or quotes, although they are all included. I’m talking about the things you work into the sermon that give it life, clarity, relevance and passion. Sometimes just one sentence well-spoken can transform an entire sermon. It might be an allusion or an apt contemporary quotation or it might be a fragment from a conversation or a statistic that drives a point home. It could be anything at all that takes the truth of the Word and illuminates it for your hearers.As with all other parts of sermon preparation, you generally can’t wait until Saturday night to start illustrating and illuminating. The time is too short, the pressure is too great, you’ve got too much on your mind, and most of all, you can’t quite remember that amazing thing you heard Bill O’Reilly (or was it Britney Spears, though you wouldn’t think you’d get them confused) say the other night. So you need a way to keep track of the insights you run across during the week.Here’s my solution. Take a yellow legal pad and put it on your desk. Write the title and text of next Sunday’s sermon at the top. Put the date of the sermon next to it. Now you’ve got the rest of the page to work with. What do you put on that page? Anything that comes to your mind. Anything you see, hear, overhear, watch, observe, anything that happens to you or is said to you, any interesting event, comment, quote, song, poem, anything at all. That sounds a little broad, doesn’t it? Well, it is broad, as broad as life itself. Each day–at least once a day, but sometime several times a day–you write down what has been on your mind or what has been happening. Jot down a phrase that helps you remember. This is not a journal or a diary. It’s a way to recall the passing parade of life. When I did this, I didn’t try to categorize things. I just jotted them down as they happened or came to me. And I tried to write down at least ten things every day. That gave me 60-75 items by the end of the week.But note this. You don’t write down only those things that you think will relate to your sermon. Remember, you don’t know on Monday what you will need on Sunday so it’s all fair game. And the list is for your eyes only. So if I were doing it this week, my list would look something like this:Josh and Leah–China!
Hot and Hotter.
Nancy’s chemo–"I know where I am going."
Deepak Chopra–"We’re all on death row."
Barry Bonds & Hank Aaron.
Time to get out of the stock market–maybe???
Jephthe and Voodoo in Haiti.
That quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
Ice Road Truckers and snow banks.
Line of cars stretched from the church to the Hilton Hotel.
Walking in the neighborhood with Dudley and Gary.
"I’m angry at my father."
Dick’s surgery.
Have you told your parents yet?
John Piper and Rabbi Kushner
Hundreds of tiny earthquakes every day in California.
Letter to the guy in the Hong Kong prison.
Tracey in New Zealand–"Why are you waiting?"
Trapped in the elevator.
"We got the medicine."
Utah coal mine.
Samson’s riddle.
The Bourne Ultimatum.
"D’oh" now in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Bart Simpson: "This is the worst day of my life." Homer Simpson: "The worst day of your life so far."
Nick starts grad school.
Music isn’t preparation for spiritual warfare. It is spiritual warfare.
My conversation with Jeff.That list comes from the last couple of days. Most of it makes sense only to me. A list like this serves as a memory aid later in the week. When I am making this list, I will jot it down in two columns. Sometimes I will underline something or highlight it or I will draw lines connecting various items.The goal is to come to the end of the week with 60-75 items. If I have 15, that’s not enough. If I have 200, that’s too many. As I’m putting my sermon in final form, I’ll glance over the list of 60-75 items. Invariably I will find ways to use 6-8 items in my sermon. I might use as many as 10 but probably not more than that. Remember, these aren’t always full-blown illustrations but they could be. It depends on my sermon, the other material I have prepared, and the need of the moment. By definition most of what I write down won’t be used. But the part that I use wouldn’t have come to me without this list.When I was using this system every week, I usually ended up with a page or two of brief notes. After Sunday, I would put the list in a big pile and start all over again. I would only carry over particularly good quotes or stories that stayed in my mind. That way the list becomes new every week. If I were to go back and look at the lists that I made five years ago, most of it wouldn’t make sense to me. It’s not meant to be a long-term thing. Those little phrases are meant to jog my mind this week as I prepare the sermon for this Sunday.Why does this work? It works because in the providence of God, he supplies around us every day the things we’re going to need later in the week.If only we had eyes to see them.
If only we wrote them down.Try this idea for a few weeks and see if it doesn’t add some freshness to your preaching.

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August 9, 2007, 5:37 AM Charles E. Whisnant says:
	Ray I have enjoyed your sermons for the last several years. This is the first time I have really been on the blog. Thanks for the ideas. You are never too old to learn.
August 9, 2007, 8:11 AM Leo Galletta says:
	Ray, Love your site and blog. You sermons have been good fodder as well as helpful in devotions. Thanks for making them available. I see you’re a regular ar WOL in Schroon. Perhaps we will meet one year. Leo
August 9, 2007, 10:11 AM Dianne Koslowski says:
	Pastor Ray, As you know, I am not a pastor, and I don’t have the daunting task of preparing a full sermon every week. However, I still speak at Fairview Nursing home each week, and once a month at P.G.M. I have been doing this for 5 1/2 years and sometimes feel my messages are getting stale. This is going to be a great help to me going forward and I prayerfully expect future messages will be a blessing to those whose ears the Word falls upon. God Bless Dianne
August 9, 2007, 11:44 AM Rodney Clements says:
Pastor, Red Hill Baptist Church	Good thoughts. I have also found a digital voice recorder works well in “capturing” items. If I hear something on the radio, or read something interesting, I can immediately record it. This keeps me from forgetting it before I get back to pen and paper. An index card in the pocket works well too.
August 11, 2007, 10:52 AM Ray Pritchard says:
	Rodney, I really like the idea of using a digital voice recorder. That plus an index card plus a pen and paper (or a computer file) help keep the preacher fresh. As I’ve pondered what I wrote, I realize that underneath it lies a great theological truth that God speaks us all the time through the circumstances of life. We ought to expect that God will give us whatever we need during the week in preparation for our sermon on Sunday—and a lot of it won’t come through our traditional study methods. All of life belongs to the Lord, and if we pay attention, we’ll find more than enough to help us as we prepare for Sunday. Blessings, Ray
August 15, 2007, 1:16 PM Rodney Clements says:
Pastor, Red Hill Baptist Church	Ray, I am curious to hear about your illustration filing system. Do you have a system for “long term” storage, or is the yellow legal pad it? I am always looking for new ideas. Thanks, Rodney
August 16, 2007, 11:27 AM Barbara says:
	Your article fits how God gives me messages! Several weeks ago I was preparing a message. I am a lay speaker. I always have thoughts going through my mind that seem to be off course. I was working on my message and thinking about ET phoning home. I tried to clear my mind to focus on “spiritual stuff”. God was giving me my message and I was trying to hit the delete button. The ET illustration and point fit perfectly in my message on Father’s Day. I didn’t do the traditional Father’s Day message I have always heard at my church but I did tie in Father’s Day, ET phoning home and how He is waiting for your call. Your idea embraces how God is constantly giving me things…creative things! Now there is a method(aka legal pad) to jot down the blurbs He gives me. I am blessed to read what God is speaking through you. Who would have thought something good could come out of Mississippi?????? Just Kidding! I have prayed for you today. Keep walking!
August 17, 2007, 4:20 PM Ray Pritchard says:
	Barbara, very glad the idea is helpful. I like it because it reminds me that God speaks to us in many ways. Because he loves us, he sends us everything we need before we have to speak—and he does it through all that happens to us during the week. Glad your Father’s Day message went so well. Thanks for your prayers. They are much appreciated. Ray
May 12, 2010, 10:32 PM chris says:
	What’s the best way to write a sermon.