Piper, without knowing, I also follow your method

If you have read my previous blog entry where Piper speaks about how he learned to preach, you will like this next one.

I am also asked from time to time how I prepare my sermons. I am very careful to whom I say it, but right now, I will make it public. Let me say, I agree with Piper 100%. I also let the adrenalin have a hold of me, and I do my sermon. For me, writing the sermon during the week, takes the whole passion away from the sermon. So, yes, Friday will be the day that I will start researching, but let me give you my steps:

1. 1. I print the passage, and read it, read it, read it. If it is an epistle, I try to read the whole epistle. If it's a longer book, I try to read as many headings on the text as I can, so I can pick up those themes that have to do with my text. From then, I do a cross reference with the online bible and resource, http://www.biblegateway.com/  I make notes, and more notes. The aim at this stage is that I make the text a part of me, and I know what the text deals with.
2. The next step is to see what the text in it's original. I majored in Greek, so I go to Great Treasures website. This websites has all the NT texts parsed, so that saves heaps of time. It has 3 levels, beginner, intermediate and advanced. I used intermediate and advanced. At this stage, I try to understand the text as it stands in its original language, what its grammer and structure tells me. I haven't found a similar page in Hebrew, and if you have one, please give us the website in the comments below. Two indispensable resources to deal with the original languages are The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament, and
   
   A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd Edition. For the New Testament, these two are a must at this stage of my sermon preparation.
3. At this stage, after I have the text well into my head, I then go into trying to see what my people needs to hear. I think that if I do this before I go into the commentaries to understand the background of the text, it makes the background of the text to serve the hearers in their everyday life, and not just imparting interesting information about the background of the text, but that is not in any way useful in their everyday life. At this stage, I am looking for the main idea to come out of the text, not me bringing the main idea into the text. I love expository preaching, but I find it sometimes so dry, that people walk away with lots of information, but with no practical knowledge. I know that the greatest thing that has happened in history is the death and resurrection of Jesus, and that's where our future salvation lies. But I don't think we should wait till then to apply that miracle to our lives (the resurrection), but we can reap the benefits here and now. I am not talking about the feel good "gospel" of Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyer, but people like these have tapped into the practical side of the gospel, while Mike Horton and the like stop with the good news being only the salvation of the soul, which is the central message, but can't bring themselves to make the gospel an everyday event. I think that the right tone is between these two positions, although I must confess, I feel at home with the Horton's position, although I am aware of the drawbacks with such a position. So, in my sermon, the Cross is the centre, but I also point out how that sacrifice works out in our lives. 
4. This is when I go to the commentaries, to see if my ideas are wrong, or to confirm my ideas about the text, and to add also more "meat" to the bones of the sermon. At this stage, I try to set the background of the text for the hearers, and to check my assumptions with other Christians whom I consider wiser and more knowledgable than me. The message has also to be historical, meaning, that the Gospel is a historical message. and it is good to keep in tune with other christians who have wrestled with the text in other contexts, and in other eras. One of the resources that help me to deal with the text from a theological point of view are the volumes from The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday's Texts, which deals with from all the readings found in the Lectionary. Yes, I am a lectionary man, I confess it.  But then again, I feel compel to do it, because it creates a discipline for me, that I preach all that I need to preach, not what I want to preach, and keeps me in hand with historical Christianity.
5. I do all of this on Friday and Saturday, and I go to sleep very early on Saturday. I wake up on Sunday very early, and put it together. Some would criticise that I haven't given myself enough time to put the sermon together, but I have found that if I do the sermon that way, I get much more out of it. Like Piper says, it works for him, it's not going to work for everybody. I really dislike the other preachers telling me that I should have the sermon done by the Friday. When I used to do that, I lost all passion to preach the manuscript by Sunday. It felt for me like I was reading non-sense, since I had no passion for it. It was something that I had done so long ago in my timeline, that it had lost its grip on me. Again, that's how it worked for me, it may not work with others like that. The problem is when you want to impose upon others what works for you, and make it like the only way to do sermons, and put down those who do it differently. God works differently with people, and we must let God do his work in people who are entrusted to share His word from the pulpit. At this stage, I finally bring all together into one sermon. I do it at least 4 hours before the sermon is actually delivered. I let all the I have read and studied "stew" during the Saturday night, and write it down on the Sunday morning, usually from 6 to 8 am, and then I preach it around 10:30 am, and it's fresh in my head.  Notice, I didn't mentioned prayer. Why? It is during my personal devotions that I pray for enlightenment. I have seen many preachers pray just for the Sunday sermon to come out good. I pray for that as well, but I keep in mind that if God used an ass to give his message, I am equipped by Him to do the same. I rather, trust in the Lord that He will inspire me.  The book that has helped me the most to put my sermon together has been The Homiletical Plot, Expanded Edition: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form. My previous pastor disliked the book, since even the author acknowledges that preaching in that form is rather a gift, not something learned. Jesus used stories, not points and subpoints for his message. Let's go back to preach the Jesus' way!!!!
6. This is a new step in my sermon preparation, and one that many of my Reformed and Lutheran friends abhor. I put a keynote together in order to give a visual appeal to my sermon. People today need to see something to link it in their minds with what it's being said. Jesus' teachings in the temple reminds me of this. When he said in John 8:12 that he is the light of the world, he is referring to the four Menorahs placed at the four sides of the temple, which represented the light of the world. This is one of many visual examples that Jesus gave during his ministry, but the prophets were sometimes even dramatic in the way they conducted themselves, Hosea having a prostitute as a wife, or Ezekiel's wife dying in Ezekiel 24. Today, we have lost such an appeal, except for those tele-evangelist, who again the Hortons of the world criticise so much. People like Horton don't see the need to do such things, because they are following Paul's way of doing things, instead of Jesus. Imagine Horton and the like criticising Jesus by making some mud with his spit and place it into somebody's eyes, or Agabus taking Paul's belt and putting it around him to give his message (Acts 21:10-11)!!!! Yes, Paul says that people will come to faith by the preaching of the word, but the word incarnate did things himself while preaching that same word. Paul also did miracles, and the issue he was tackling was against those who took the melo-dramatic too far, not curtailing all melo-dramatic or visual aides. We are human after all, and the Hortons of the world put Jesus methods down without intent for sure, but they would consider Jesus' preaching and teaching methods, along with the prophets, of no use today. Tele-evangelist are what Paul is attacking, those who only emphasise the melo-dramatic, but don't preach the core of the Gospel. It's very difficult to keep both, as it is very difficult to conceive that Jesus is both mand and God. This final stage (although I pick up the pictures along my sermon preparations) gives me the visual aides in order to convey my message better to those hearing me. It helps me personally since it keeps me on track, and does not allow me to go down my own rabbit holes, since I have to stick talking of what's on the screen. I have to admit something here as well, where did I learn to do this? Steve Jobs, who was the master of this. The one mistake that preachers do when using the projector, is that they feel it with words. People are listening to words already, and what they want, is to see how these words look like. When I read that Jobs had a similar view, I just embraced the projector.

Well, after giving you my methods of preaching, I leave you once again, with Piper, and his way of putting the sermon together.

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

Albert Mohler's take on the death of Steve Jobs, from a Christian perspective.
Thursday, October 6, 2011

The death of Steve Jobs, founder and iconic leader of Apple, is a signal moment in the lives of the “Digital Generation” that Jobs, along with a very few other creative geniuses, made possible. Few individuals of any historical epoch can claim to have changed the way so many people live their lives, do their work, and engage the products of the culture.

Jobs was one of the most influential cultural creatives of all time. If that seems like an exaggeration, it is only because the products that Jobs and Apple brought into being have become so familiar that they appear as the furnishings of contemporary lives. The personal computer was not invented by Steve Jobs, but he saw the possibility of integrated systems that would allow personal creativity to blossom. He saw products that customers did not even know that they needed — and then released the products to the public, creating entire new markets and unleashing an explosion of world-wide technological creativity.

The Apple products that Jobs personally introduced, including the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, defined a new era. There is now no going back. We are in the digital age to stay. But, that world will now have to reckon with the absence of Steve Jobs.

Born to unwed parents in 1955, Jobs was adopted by a couple in Northern California — the region later to be known as Silicon Valley. In one sense, Jobs was first defined by Silicon Valley. Later, he would return the favor by defining the region on his own terms.

He, along with Stephen Wozniak, developed Apple as an idea and as a company. After dropping out of Reed College, Jobs joined Stephen Wozniak in attending the meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, which met at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, California. They began attending the meetings in 1975. In 1976 they began Apple with just over $1,000 of their own money. By 1981, the company was worth $600 million. In 1983, Apple joined the Fortune 500.

Jobs had his share of technological failures, or disappointments. Nevertheless, even in his years away from Apple (after losing control of the company), Jobs redefined entire industries. He developed Pixar into a digital movie powerhouse, among other things, before returning to lead Apple in 1997, becoming CEO again in 2000. The rest is history.

Christians considering the life and death of Steve Jobs will do well to remember once again the power of an individual life. God has invested massive creative abilities in his human creatures. These are often used for good, and sometimes deployed to evil ends. Steve Jobs devoted his life to a technological dream that he thought would empower humanity. He led creative teams that developed technological wonders, and then he made them seemingly necessary for life in the digital age.

Jobs’ massive creative genius was matched to an almost unerring intuition of taste. His design specifications and attention to aesthetic detail are legendary. He reportedly held product designs such as the iPhone in his hand, closing his eyes as he ran his fingers over each surface, mandating changes to make the product, to his mind, aesthetically perfect. He once defined taste as “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.”

His sense of taste — almost an intuition to know in advance what would be considered tasteful — was remarkable. Nevertheless, taste is not a very substantial basis for a worldview, nor can technology save us.

Steve Jobs lived a life that, by secular standards, will be considered legendary. Generations to come will be directly influenced by forces and products that he and his company brought to reality. He died a legend, and one of the world’s richest men.

His personal life was far more complicated than his cool and reserved public image suggested. And his worldview, seemingly and vaguely Eastern in orientation (there was speculation that Jobs was Buddhist), was very much a part of the hidden Steve Jobs. In his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Jobs said:

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

He told the graduating students to pursue their dreams, and cited The Whole Earth Catalog, a work that symbolized the quirky culture of Jobs’ youth in northern California: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

In diet, he was a pescetarian, eating fish as the only meat. In public, he was the essence of cool — redefining the role of the CEO as the narrator and public revealer of new technologies and products. In private, beginning in 2004 he was fighting against pancreatic cancer.

In his Stanford address, Jobs told of a saying he first heard as a 17-year-old: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”

He stepped down as Apple CEO in August, telling his company’s employees, “I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”

He exited the scene with grace, ensuring that the company he founded would endure when he was off the scene. There is much to learn from his life and his legacy.

At the same time, Christians cannot leave the matter where the secular world will settle on Steve Jobs’ legacy. The secular conversation will evade questions of eternal significance, but Christians cannot. As is the case with so many kings, rulers, inventors, leaders, and shapers of history, Christians can learn from Steve Jobs, and even admire many of his gifts and contributions. Yet, we must also observe what is missing here.

I am writing this essay on an Apple laptop computer. I am listening to the strains of Bach playing from my iPad via an AirPort Express. My iPhone sits on my desk, downloading a new App from iTunes. Steve Jobs has invaded my life, my house, my office, my car, and my desktop — and I am thankful for all of these technologies.

But unerring taste, aesthetic achievement, and technological genius will not save the world. Christians know what the world does not — that the mother tending her child, the farmer planting his crops, the father protecting his family, the couple faithfully living out their marital vows, the factory worker laboring to support his family, and the preacher preparing to preach the Word of God, are all doing far more important work.

We have to measure life by its eternal impact, even as we are thankful for every individual who makes this world a better place. But, don’t expect eternal impact to be the main concern of the business pages.