Slowing Down 5.25.2023

     It is common for athletes “in the zone” to describe their experience by saying that “everything moves in slow motion.” When a ball player moves up from college to the pro level, they often struggle until they get to this magical place where everything slows down, the game comes to them, and their gifts can shine. 

    Something similar needs to happen in preaching. This month we have talked about a few of the details of putting together a message and how we must be patient at our work. Those observations are tempered by the bald fact that Sunday is coming. That is the deadline. This week I want to discuss another layer of how we can get into that zone where like an athlete “it all slows down for us” even though the Sunday deadline looms.

    This is another process and tool-driven discussion. We can’t change the calendar, but we can change expectations and we can alter our workflows so that we build slowness into our practice. It won’t add any more time but will help you “see the ball better” and slow things down. Think of this as an equation in which you need to master the inputs to get consistently good outputs.

Multiple Drafts+Multiple Passes+Multiple Tools=Quality preaching.

No, this is not scientific, though it is based on experience and observation. And even though I have described it as an “equation” it is more process and best practices.

Multiple Drafts

    I’ve often written about how much material good preachers and writers leave on the cutting room floor. Good editing and proper cutting begin with clear boundaries between drafts. If you sit at your computer hoping to create a perfect sermon in one pass you will become frustrated and prolong the process.

    You want a good sermon for the pulpit. The challenging work won in the study requires detailed attention to exegesis and proper hermeneutics. Then you will need to work out your message, in your voice, using colloquial English. 

    Commit yourself to the preparation of multiple drafts. They need not all be identical. You can experiment. You can move things around (God bless the computer industry).  You can test words, phases, transitions, illustrations—all the “homiletical devices”. Throw it all at the wall and see what sticks. 

    I write my first drafts in an outliner. I’ll discuss why in a moment, suffice it to say that first drafts need to be flexible, factual, and focused. They need to be anchored fully to the text. They need to be complete enough that you can edit without turning subsequent drafts into full rewrites. 

    In the second draft, you move from writing for the eye to writing for the ear. A sermon, like a speech, is experienced in a specific context. The first draft should nail content, and the second draft should focus on context. The first draft clarifies what the text says. The second draft is concerned with who you are speaking to, and how you will speak. That is the most essential quality of good preaching.

    When you complete the second draft you should have a preachable sermon. The twenty-first century, however, requires much more of us. As I edit my pulpit manuscript, I can prepare a slide deck and a handout at the same time. “This saves time”. Of course, I am “saving time” at something that wasn’t even a thing when I started preaching--oh the tyranny of Parkinsons Law! So, you have a sermon that’s ready to go but you have more “deliverables” yet to complete. Though you are done drafting, every separate document you prepare is another opportunity to edit your work, refine it, and revise it. 

Multiple Passes

    This brings us to the second part of our “equation".  Each time you draft, review, or edit you are making another pass through the document. I think that this is where, even after years of pulpit work, we can continue to improve our preaching. 

    I admit, I get tired of reading my own writing. I have been doing this for a long time, and some of you have as well. It is easy to fall into sloppy habits of deciding that passable is good enough. Repeatable, structured processes help us to overcome the inertia of avoidance. 

    Every draft is another pass through your document. We have very capable tools that help us find repeated words, misspellings, grammatical errors, and perfectly formatted, grammatically correct nonsense. You’ve gotta do the work to cash the check. The more you invest the greater the return. 

Multiple Tools

    Some of you may think this part of the equation is overkill. And each man must select His own tools. Here is my “tool flow” if you will. I will discuss how each is used, but let’s look at it panoramically first. 

Draft 1: OmniOutliner. (Fully outlined manuscript)

Draft 2: Logos Sermon Writer. (Refined and formatted materials ready for each "deliverable")

Draft 3: MS Word (Pulpit Manuscript)

Draft 4: MS Word (Handout)

Draft 5: MS PowerPoint. (Slides)

Let’s break it down. I do my notetaking, researching, and drafting in an outliner program, currently OmniOutliner. My entire sermon calendar for the year is one huge outline. Each week has a place for study, notes, and my first draft. This allows me to move bits and pieces around, archive things that might be useful later, and see sermon structure throughout the drafting process. Next, I cut and paste everything into Logos Sermon Writer. I format my manuscript for my iPad—, Huge type, Churchill’s “Psalm Style” structure, lots of white space, and clear transitions. This is also when slides are “made”, and blanks added for answers in sermon handouts. When I’m done here, I have a preachable sermon. But I’m not finished.

    Next, I export the whole thing to MS Word. When I post my sermon manuscript to Facebook on Friday morning I will use a PDF of the Word file, but it is not ready for public viewing yet. We don’t run grammar and spelling checkers because we don’t know grammar but because our own errors are often invisible to us. Microsoft Editor and Grammarly do a tolerable job of flagging problems. It is also a quick way to see the Flesch–Kincaid score and “readability” level of what I am writing. These give a good gauge of whether I am hitting my target of an understandable sermon for my preaching context. While I am reviewing in Word, I am making the necessary changes in my document in the Logos Sermon writer. When finished, I create a PDF and move on to the next pass. 

    I export my “handout” document from Logos to Word and make another pass through the document. The nature of the document—only headings with fill-in-the-blank spaces means that there is not much content editing to do…but it is another opportunity to go through the material. When corrected, I make a PDF for storage and print copies for the Sunday bulletin.

    The last step is to export from Logos to a PowerPoint file for our media people. After the file is rendered into the correct format—I review it (fifth pass through the material). Any edits to the slides at this point must be made to the original document in Logos and re-exported. Just this week I had to reformat something which required a re-do on this pass through the document. (FYI I am (obviously) doing the final edit of this blog, right now. I am making substantial changes to both format and content.)

    And I know some of you are thinking “How long does all of this take?” I begin a typical week with a substantial amount of work (backgrounds, exegetical difficulties, preliminary outlines) already complete. I try and work 2 hours Sunday afternoon and a full day on Monday. Unless there is a crisis that needs immediate attention, working at a diligent but not breakneck pace this is a hard day’s work. And it is the first thing I do during the week. Not the last. Not when it can be squeezed into an otherwise crowded schedule. First. When I’m fresh, alert, and focused. First thing, every week. None of what I have said about slowing down, none of these skills will help if you do not make preaching your priority. Slowing down is primarily an outcome of prioritizing the ministry of the Word to which we are called.