Proclaimer Blog
Anatomy of a sermon: Day 5
Today I work on the manuscript. I reduce it to thoughts and ideas and preach from those – that happens to be my style. Years ago I used to do this with a fresh piece of paper. Sometimes I still do. But mostly I do it now by highlighting a key phrase or word per paragraph and preach from that. I also annotate the manuscript, sometimes fairly heavily.
I also preach it through, audibly, at least once, often twice, much to the amusement of my family. We have the most holy tropical fish in the UK, apparently, though I find the fish are remarkably unresponsive to my preaching.
This is the day when application tends to be honed. As a general rule, I find that my application has been too general at this point, and I try to find time to reflect and amend so that it is more pertinent. I also think about whether there is anything in the news that will serve better as an illustration. I don’t want to force the point, but it makes the sermon feel more contemporary if there is something I can relate to that’s happened during the week. I include Christian news in that, because I think it’s a good way for introverted evangelicals to hear a bit more about the world. An “information application” Mrs R calls it.
In my normal pastoral week this day is a Saturday, but as it happens, I made sure that Saturday ended in the study at lunchtime. There is always more I could be doing on the sermon. There is always more room for dotting and crossing. But I figure I am going to be a better preacher, and more use to my people if I have not spent Saturday evening fretting over the sermon and making wholesale changes. I need to leave it with the Lord at some point, and that’s halfway through Day 5 in terms of preparation.