How Do You Prepare Sermons?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | A few years back, Pastor John was asked how he writes his sermons, and this is what he had to say.
00:00:11.000 | My pattern is not to be followed by anybody except those who are wired exactly like I am,
00:00:18.000 | which is probably no one, because we're all so different.
00:00:22.000 | So when I teach preaching to the guys, I really stress, "Please, please, please, look how I do it.
00:00:28.000 | Take that into account, but don't try to imitate me because it might not work for you."
00:00:36.000 | So my approach is, if I know my text fairly well, if it's familiar to me, then I'm not on it until Friday.
00:00:48.000 | I just pick it out either weeks or days ahead of time.
00:00:52.000 | I have to get a text entitled to the worship guys by Tuesday.
00:00:57.000 | And I'm not studying it, and I'm not writing or working on the sermon until Friday morning.
00:01:03.000 | Then I devote all of Friday to sermon preparation.
00:01:07.000 | And if I need to, I'll stay up all night.
00:01:10.000 | I've never stayed up all night on Friday, but I've stayed up until 2.
00:01:15.000 | And that's when the text really blocked me.
00:01:17.000 | I just, "Oh, man, I don't know what I'm going to say about this. I need to study this a little more."
00:01:22.000 | Or I get an interruption in the day that's totally unexpected for a ministry crisis or whatever.
00:01:27.000 | But the nights are always there as buffers.
00:01:29.000 | I almost never do that.
00:01:31.000 | So I'm starting on Friday, and I put on my computer English, Greek, or English, Hebrew.
00:01:39.000 | And I read through the original language, getting all the help I need with my little mouse.
00:01:44.000 | And I've got a half sheet of paper in front of me on the desk.
00:01:48.000 | And I'm writing out the text, and I'm making comments as I go.
00:01:53.000 | And as I write out the text, I'm just praying, "God, show me. Show me what's here for my people.
00:01:59.000 | Show me what's really here, not in my head that I'm going to make be here, but is really here.
00:02:04.000 | Let me see new things that I've never seen before."
00:02:06.000 | And as I write, for whatever reason, this works for me, I see things.
00:02:11.000 | The pen, the computer, the Greek, the Hebrew, the writing it out.
00:02:15.000 | And so I'm circling things and making little comments in the margin.
00:02:18.000 | This little half sheet looks like an absolute jumble when I'm done.
00:02:21.000 | And when I'm done, I've generally got a whole slug of questions that can be answered.
00:02:26.000 | I've got lines drawn all over the place.
00:02:28.000 | And as I step back and say, "Now, Lord, what am I going to do with all that?"
00:02:33.000 | I could talk on that for three hours.
00:02:35.000 | I've got 35 or 45 minutes to do this.
00:02:39.000 | And in prayer and thought, some of those circles just come together.
00:02:44.000 | And I say, "Okay, I'm going to make those three points or those two points or those four points."
00:02:49.000 | And I take out another sheet of paper and try to figure out, "Now, how might that fit together?"
00:02:53.000 | Should it go backwards, forwards, start in the middle, go this way?
00:02:56.000 | And once I'm there, and that may happen by lunch, go eat lunch.
00:03:01.000 | And then I put up my Word document, and I just start writing.
00:03:07.000 | Here's my thoughts based on this little doodling here.
00:03:10.000 | And I compose straight onto the computer, and I'm editing as I go, and I'm thinking out loud,
00:03:15.000 | sometimes preaching out loud as I go, feeling it as I go, praying as I go.
00:03:20.000 | And that takes four, five, six, seven, eight hours to get that written.
00:03:26.000 | And when it's written, I print it out, and I go to bed or go to be with Noelle or whatever.
00:03:34.000 | And then Saturday, after lunch, after telethon, I go to Lee and Chin or Jimmy John's.
00:03:42.000 | Then I come home, and then I really go to work on getting from there to here and here with all my little markings and so on.
00:03:49.000 | So what I take into the pulpit on Sunday is about 10 double-spaced pages, about 10,000 to 11,000 bytes.
00:03:56.000 | And they're so marked up, they look like chicken scratch, and they function as my outline while I'm talking.
00:04:04.000 | Works for me.
00:04:06.000 | Most of the people, when they hear that I do it that way, say, "No way. No way could I start on Friday,"
00:04:10.000 | or, "No way could I take a manuscript into the pulpit and not have it be canned," and so on.
00:04:14.000 | Absolutely not a problem. Do it fine. You know, wear your armor, not my armor.
00:04:20.000 | That was Pastor John Piper, who is now back home from the Middle East,
00:04:23.000 | which means we will return soon with all new episodes of Ask Pastor John.
00:04:27.000 | So please continue to email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:04:33.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
00:04:35.000 | [end]
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