Study

I have had some difficulty getting around to writing my blog this week. I don’t know if anyone waits with bated breath to see it, but I’d rather not take the chance in disappointing anyone. I had composed something in my mind yesterday while cooling my heels before and Elder’s meeting but didn’t like how it was shaping up, so I didn’t even put anything into electrons.

The reason I was having such difficulty is that I have planned to be blogging this month about my major project for October—writing my sermon calendar for 2022. What is keeping me from blog writing is the actual process of working on what is, the central project of my entire preaching year. I have decided to write a few words about what is, for me, one of the central motivating factors for being so forward-thinking and organized. Study time.

I know that the backbone of my preaching for 2022 will be 3 interlocked series covering the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the Apocalypse of John. Consequently, for the last 6 days, I have been examining the vast trove of Johannine literature. I emailed a copy of my current working bibliography to my good friend Wes. It is 10 densely packed pages. I have added at least 10 works to it today which I found scattered in iBooks and the Kindle app. And I’m not done looking yet. You might say. “You cannot possibly read everything.” You would be correct. It is, however, valuable to have a large working bibliography so that when some work is cited in a book/article/monograph that you are reading, you have some chance of locating the original source of the information. 

Right now I am reading a very good book: Porter, Stanley E, and Fay, Ron C. The Gospel of John in Modern Interpretation, 2018. So today, whilst reading about some of the significant scholars who worked on the Gospel of John I was constantly looking online, in my Bible-Study software, in iBook’s, in my Kindle app, and on my shelves, (yes I have them) to see what I had access to. As I continue to read, investigate, outline, plan, scheme, and gameplay my preaching during this month of preparation I will be constantly prioritizing which things need to be read in detail, when they should be read, and in what order. I will also earmark journal articles and the occasional long-form monograph which deal with specific passages and make sure that they are associated with the other materials for those passages so that I can use them when I am exegeting that section of text. 

Again, you might be asking, “why?” I want to maximize my research time so that I have the best possible basis for exegeting each passage I will preach from. I want to know exactly what issues I need to deal with as they come to the forefront during the actual process of exegeting each text and writing each sermon. It doesn’t just happen. If I just began at the top of the book list and read them in alphabetical order I would not get through the list and I would not be able to leverage what I learned so that I would be better prepared to feed the flock to which God has called me to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. 

What can you take away from this essay? If you are a preacher, you need to work hard and be unafraid to share your methods of working with your congregation. Let them know how you study, choose sermon texts and series, how you work through exegesis and secondary literature to not only preach good sermons but also to improve as a preacher. If you are a listener of sermons rather than a preparer and preacher of them, you have the right to expect that the one who is preaching is doing the work. Good research has the greatest impact on the congregation when it is not evident through quotation, citation, or ostentation but through a continual arc of improvement in the preacher's understanding of the Bible and his ability to study and proclaim it. In other words. If it does not happen in the study, it eventually won’t happen in the pulpit.