Video Transcript: Studying and Putting Together the Content of an Effective Sermon (Henry Reyenga)

Video Transcript: Studying and Putting Together the Content of an Effective Sermon (Henry Reyenga) 

While you've made your beginning, and you're starting to put that sermon together, get ideas, get ready for your first presentation. Today we're going to talk about studying for and putting together the content of an effective sermon, the content, what actually will go into the writing and to make it longer than just like two minutes, and it actually develop something that actually becomes a full sermon. That's what we're going to talk about today. Now, when you study for the content of a sermon and study for a sermon, there's basically five things that you're going to really pursue in your study. And this could take anywhere from three to 15 hours of study. 

First of all, the first thing is basically the study of Christianity. And in this sometimes is done before message like an experienced preacher may take a lot less time to write a message when it comes to this one piece. Because this experience, preacher has sort of been in the culture of Christianity for a long time, the doctrine, the practice, the church, and how a church will receive various messages. But the study of the culture of Christianity is something that is very important when putting together a sermon, in a lot of ways. 

When you are at Christian Leaders Institute, you're doing some of the study of the culture of Christianity in advance, so that when you're out there on the field, preaching, a lot of the study is happening at that time. But there are times in the sermon, when you need to stay the culture of Christianity on a specific topic. I'll give an example. Let's take some controversial issues, like let's say marriage, divorce. Now, here's an example where if you're gonna write a sermon on marriage and divorce, it's very important that you sort of research where is this topic about in? What are we today thinking about this, and it can be as a very difficult subject, because there's a lot of controversy on this. And I'm not telling you how you should come down and all that controversy and where you should be, but understand that that culture of Christianity, as it relates today is also a piece when you're studying for a sermon. Now, it might come somewhere anywhere in the message, maybe it's not the first one. But I will tell you at Christian Leaders Institute, you are studying the culture of Christianity in an in depth way. You know, one of the reasons that ministry training is so important for by-vocational leaders and preachers is because that culture of Christianity is foundational when you put a sermon together. So as you're taking exegesis, and apologetics, and doctrine, ministry training, pastoral care all of these subjects, they are all the culture of Christianity in a studying way. So that's part of the study for a sermon. 

Now, let's talk specifically about when you have a passage before you a passage before you, if you're going to see this in material that you're going to go through in this topic of study, this week of study. First of all, you look at what did it mean to the first hearer's as it let's say, in the beginning of the sermon comes forward, in out of your walk with God, and you're, you're inspired to preach on this particular sermon on passage, and you're looking into it. Well, what you're looking at is, what did it mean to the first hearers. And what you do is you exegete out of, you look at what a passage means you exegete that passage. Next is as your exegening, keep in mind the study of what it means to you. And be careful here, because what can happen is you can exegete, but then what it means to you can be so strong that you and here's another term, you eisegete, you put into the passage too much you here. Where all of a sudden your biases come back, and you start pretending as if what it meant to you in the first years, when it was written, it becomes too dominant. But yet, you can say, well, I'm just going to take me off the table. 

That doesn't work either because then what's happening is that there's a, a presupposition in you that doesn't allow that to happen. So the Holy Spirit works with you as you listen to a passage for the first time. But then what you do is you take that next step, what does the word mean? based upon what it meant to the first hearers? What does that mean to others? So, how did the principles, the spiritual intuition, the historical redemptive process the words in the Greek or the Hebrew, if you have commentaries or or helps to help you study? How did those first words come for today to mean anything for today? Okay, but then it goes back to the study of what the word means to you. So as you now are subservient to what the word means to you. Those are those foundational principles that undergird your study. Now in that study, you're going to get many of you will get a lot of help with commentaries, study Bibles, maybe their original language, you know, all of these things you're going to see in this class, and you're going to get more and more tools to actually dig in. You might part of your study, you might call pastor, that friend, you know, why would you study what did you see? There are plenty of on line study tools, study tools to just really dig into the scriptures. 

There's also other sermons on the internet is thousands of sermons where another pastor is dug into a passage to hear how he has understood that and how that preacher has sort of put it all together. But be careful in this, be careful that you become a saviour, you're not going to copy someone else. Now, if what they say is true, learn from it, integrate that put that into your whole process of the study for a sermon. In this session, you're going to look at various resources. And Dr. Daniel Akin is a preacher of preaching, and you're gonna look into some of his resources about the studying for a message. Eric Mckittle is a blogger in the area of preaching, and he is thorough, and he gets into so many subjects. And we are going to look at many of his blogs as a way to give you resources for the study of a message. And you're going to start looking at Dr. Daniel Aiken and Eric Mckittle. in this session.

Some practical resources of the week, you know, we're going to talk about presentational issues that you have, and one of them is just fear of public speaking. And that might be you. And how do you get over that fear and we're gonna talk about how preparation and practice and in your own personal your person how you walk through certain walls within yourself in the brain and how you get over some of that fear of presentations, you're going to enjoy that session I really did myself was I was third preparing this. Finally, there are some practical resources of the week, John Ortberg, amazing Bible teacher, and he has a topical sermon that you're going to look at and sort of take in and learn from, so that you can be a very effective communicator of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. So in this week, you're going to actually dig in and study. Learn how to study and get better and better and better at putting together the principles that truth that teaching the next steps of the Word of God in a coherent fashion. 

This is basically going to set you up for your first message that you're going to start putting together this week and next week and this first message just start thinking about it is that first shot of putting together a sermon, a start of a sermon that we can look at and encourage you and how you can be the best preacher that God has called you to be effective for His kingdom.