Full Text for Homiletics 2- Volume 23 - When do you go through the six steps of sermon preparation? (Video)

Homiletics 2 File 23 Professor Carl Fickenscher II Question by: David >> DAVID: You know, all this would take a lot of time. Do you really do all of it? You're probably going to say yes, so I'll ask right now. When do you do it? >> PROF. FICKENSCHER: Yes, David, you knew I would say yes. And you're right. In a very real sense, one does go through all of these steps each time in order to be productive in preaching week after week after week. But there definitely is good news. To begin with, one becomes quite efficient with it. When you've done these things week after week after week, you can move through the process much more quickly. Some things become second nature. Also, obviously, some of the steps don't have to be repeated uniquely each time. For example, when in year C you're working with Luke's gospel throughout the year, all the examination of the isagogical information and the full movement of the entire gospel, you do that once at the beginning of the year and that becomes very familiar to you throughout the year. So that sort of thing saves time week after week after week. Yes, you're going to get much more efficient, and many of these steps you can skip over simply because they're the same from one week to the next. But these really are the steps that I feel are important in the invention process for a pastor if he really is going to be productive and his preaching 2,000 or 3,000 times in his ministry. To skip over some of these steps, to do a shallow job of exegesis, will invariably result in shallow preaching. Very often it will begin to result in repetitive preaching, where you fall back on the familiar ideas week after week, rather than digging for something fresh, for something new. It can lead to a great deal of frustration, as you have a more and more difficult time to come up coming up with something that is original and fresh to share with your people. And it can even lead to some rather embarrassing oversights if, for example, you've forgotten to examine the context and a member of your congregation points out to you that a question you raised and answered in your sermon was also actually answered differently just a few verses after your text. It really is important for a pastor to go through a process that is very meaningful in the entire preaching exercise. I would suggest that this process really is something that goes throughout the week. In my routine, on Monday, I would begin by looking at the texts in English and choosing one of the pericopes that would then be my focus for the week. By Wednesday morning, when I had that staff meeting with my vicar and associate and others, I would have my exegetical work completed, so that by that Wednesday morning devotion, I would usually have one sentence that I wanted to express in the sermon, and that, of course, would be expressed as the central thought and then modified ultimately to the theme. That would give me Wednesday/Thursday to think through the process and work out my outline, and for me, all day Friday was the complete writing day when the actual nitty gritty of putting the sermon down in the computer in preparation for preaching would take place. By the way, since my children were in school Monday through Friday, and Saturday was the day that I could have time with my wife and children together, I made very sure that this work was completed by the end of the day Friday. That took discipline, but it certainly did free up a wonderful family day on Saturday and I found that it made me much more relaxed throughout the week, knowing that there would not be a last minute panic, but that by budgeting my time Monday, Wednesday, and finally Friday, I would be able to enjoy the other activities of the week as a pastor, and enjoy my free time and leisure time with my family as well.