Update to How I’ll Use This Blog- Your Thoughts?

If you’ve kept up with my blog for a while, you’ll know that I used to post “Monday Morning Rewinds” every Monday, which summarized and allowed for discussion of my sermons from Sundays.  I stopped doing that a while ago, and I added an update note on this post of How I’ll This Blog.  You might want to read that, and I’m asking for your suggestions:

1. Can you think of anything/way that would facilitate sermon discussion here?  You’ll see in my update that I’m looking to do that more efficiently.
2. Are there other ways you would appreciate this blog to be used?  This to write about, share, etc.?  I want to serve my church and others in the best ways I can.

If you have suggestions, please leave comments.  Thanks for reading!

2-Hour Monday Rule Now In Effect

I implemented this new rule this week, and I’ve had an incredibly productive week so far:  the first 2 hours of every Monday will be spent only on sermon prep.

• I set my timer so I’m really on task.  At the end of the time, I finish the current thought and switch tasks.
• I don’t have the laptop wide open unless I’m working with Logos 4.  Otherwise, it’s to the side, cracked enough to run my iTunes.
• I don’t reply to texts or phone calls (unless it’s my wife!).  If people call the church, Camma takes messages.
• I don’t check emails every time my phone dings.  They’ll still be there after 2 hours.

Some benefits I’ve already found:

• I can process big thoughts longer throughout the week.
• I am finished quicker, ensuring that my days off are really off and with my family.
• I have more time to research certain issues that develop.
• I feel more productive, which makes me works more efficiently in other things (it’s mental!).
• Usually Mondays are my administration-tasks days (which they still are), but it’s easy coming off of Sunday to be slower moving on Monday.  This increases productivity.

This rule could be implemented for other large tasks besides sermon prep.  It’s simply a way to ensure productivity in a world that is full of distractions. Try it if you have a big task that needs accomplished throughout the week!

This Week’s Focus: New Sermon Planning

I’ll be taking most of my time this week to focus on upcoming sermon planning.  I am preaching through the Gospel of John right now, which will probably take a long time!  So what I’m doing is breaking this John series up a little to allow our church to receive teaching from other areas of Scripture and to break up what could be “redundant” for some people.

These short series will focus on different topics that I’ve felt impressed to preach as they relate to our church.  There is part of every pastor that must be constantly discerning the needs of his people and praying for the Holy Spirit to reveal Scripture that can be taught to help.  This does not mean that preaching through John is not applying to our people–I think it is.  But there is value in mixing it up a little when spending a long time in one book of the Bible.

The shorter upcoming series that will start in May will deal with Biblical worship.  I’ll share more details about it soon as it is ironed out.

I’d appreciate prayer this week as I focus on sermon planning.  Thanks!

Questions About My Preaching

A funny picture done by two ladies in the church for a prayer-walk experience. They have fun personalities!

I’m writing this because of questions I’ve been asked over the last several months about my preaching.  I have put them into a Q&A format in this post, although this was never done as an interview.  These are just real questions people in the church have asked me, so I thought I’d make some answers and info available here.

I hope this is informative to the people of the church, and maybe even helpful to other preachers in their preparation, organization, and delivery.
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Q- What version of the Bible do you preach from?

A- English Standard Version (ESV).

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Q- What version of the Bible do you study from?

A- 7 different ones- ESV, King James, New King James, New Living Translation, New International Version, New American Standard Bible, and Holman Christian Standard Bible.  I like the variety because they will show some word variations in our English language which then indicate you might want to really study original languages in those areas.

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Q-  How do you decide what you are going to preach?

New Series in John Starting this Sunday

Landon Sheely does an awesome job creating my sermon graphics (landonsheely.com)

Here’s the link to our church’s website with the details of the sermon series I’m beginning this Sunday called “The Gospel of John: He Must Increase, I Must Decrease.” I’m pretty excited to get this series going!

I’m only making several months of planned sermon titles available in this series because it is highly likely that they will change as we progress.  There might be some areas that need longer amounts of time dedicated to them that I’ll figure out as I go deeper in planning.  I won’t preach just to preach it, so that’s why we’re taking time to go through the book.  It will take quite a while to go through the whole book, so I’ll periodically take breaks from John to do some “mini-series” on different topics or in different Biblical genres to break up the monotony of being in one book for so long.  The monotony is not because of boredom (or at least shouldn’t be) because the sermons in John are highly practical and should be savory to one who wants to know Christ and His power more!

If you’re around Marion, I hope you’ll join us for worship at 11:00 on Sunday mornings.  If not, but you would still like to hear the sermons, you can get them through our church media page.

Struggling Through Sermon Prep

I’ll be honest and say what probably happens to many people who teach and preach God’s Word– it’s a struggle to prepare sometimes.

When I say struggle, I’m talking about wrestling through the process of coming up with the finished “product,” whether it be an outline, manuscript, or some other guide for the teaching.

I struggle at times.  And this week I believe I found a solution to this struggle:  Spend more time meditating on the text.

Maybe that seems simple, but it works for me.  It’s easy to read a section of scripture and then rush off to pound out an outline or preaching guide full of illustrations, thoughts, and stories.  It’s harder to develop a more thorough exegesis of the Scripture and discover a fresh way to apply to the lives of others.  I usually struggle because I haven’t taken time to fully understand the text and let the Holy Spirit make sense of it in my life.  Once I’ve been able to apply it to my life, then it’s much easier to organize a way to communicate it to others.

Preaching/teaching Scripture is always about the Scripture.  So spend more time there!

Transcription Would Be Nice, Right?

Mondays are always days for me to reflect on Sunday’s events at the church, as well as prepare for the week’s activities that are ahead.  So yesterday, I was thinking about this past Sunday’s sermon- was it effective?  Did it hit the main point?  Was it applicable for people?  All these kinds of things…

But then I thought this: how could this message get out to more people? I preach to approximately 100-115 people “live” each Sunday.  I’m not exactly sure how many people listen online through our website or subscribe to our podcast.  But is that getting the message out to more people who might benefit from hearing it?

I stumbled on a link to a sermon transcription service and was looking through what they were saying.  I agree much with this statement from their website:  Based on my research, three times as many people choose to download a written transcript when given a choice between written and audio files.

I think that makes a lot of sense.  

Marriage Sermons the Next 2 Sundays

Here’s the post on our church’s website that announces my mini-series on marriage that starts tomorrow.  I’m excited to preach on marriage!  It’s become one of my favorite topics because it seems to be an area where Scripture has not completely permeated Christians even, to where we’re seeing much decay in marriages, and the same destruction of marriage that we’re seeing on a national level is happening among Christians.  Yet, in my opinion, Scripture is very clear about marriage, and I hope we have a fun, hard look at Scriptural truth the next two Sundays regarding marriage.

Join us at Central for Sunday School at 9:45am, and worship at 11:00am.