Video Transcript: Session 3 Preparing to Preach

I'm glad you're back for session three, you'll notice the title of this session is the  fact that we are going to be looking at preparing to preach, I'm going to be doing this for several classes, in the next several classes about the things we need to  do to prepare to preach. Well, now in that regard, there's an old story. I'm sure  

it's apocryphal, but it was about a priest who had gotten kind of lazy, he was in  the Anglican tradition here in the United States. And he'd gotten kind of lazy  about preaching, he could talk pretty well, and he could talk pretty well off the  cuff. And so he decided that gradually, he would do less and less and did that, in preparing to preach until finally, you know, he would look on Saturday, look at a  few notes and kind of talk off the cuff on Sunday morning. And he was getting  away with that, even though his church wasn't thriving, and people weren't  growing, but he was getting away with it. And that was fine with him because  he'd spend more time golfing because that was his passion. One Sunday, he's  getting his vestments on getting ready to go out and lead the service and preach when somebody comes running back and said, The bishop's in the audience  today. And he's just he's worried because he knows the bishop is going to know  that this is off the cuff kind of preaching. And it's not. It's not been well thought  through, but he doesn't know what to do. So he goes in there and he goes  through the service and he preaches, and he's expecting the bishop to come to  him afterwards and kind of read him the riot act and the bishop doesn't. In fact,  the bishop apparently had an appointment somewhere else and left. And so the  next day the guy is still trying to the pastor is still trying to figure out how am I  going to save face here. So he writes an email to the bishop. And he says,  bishop, he says, You got to know that I made a vow. So I made a vow that I  wouldn't speak anything in a sermon that God didn't give me. So I, I vowed not  to do preparation, but to depend solely on what the Holy Spirit would send at  that moment, when I preach on Sunday morning. And the next didn't hear back  from the bishop that whole day. And so he's worried how, how the bishop  receives that when he gets an email. And the email simply said, I release you  from your vow. Now, I say that just to say that preaching, you can be a pretty  lazy preacher, you can, it's very possible. But if you're going to preach Well,  preparation is vital. How you how you prepare, will engage you in the power of  the Holy Spirit flowing through your message. Now, having said that, I've got to  say there are some traditions that that depend more on, you know, just that that  momentary, God give me the message right now. In fact, that was, just before I  was recording this session, I was having lunch with a friend who told me about  his pastor, who was preaching, and he has a kind of this habit of, of preaching,  and then all of a sudden, he'd say, Oh, I gotta stop a moment. I got to make sure I'm preaching what God's word is. And I got to see what he wants me to say  next. And then he'd just be silent for a moment. And then he'd go on preaching.  Now, I want to say two things about that one, I believe that can happen that God would give a message that way, if you're in a preaching ministry yourself, you've 

probably had that happen at one time or another, where all of a sudden, you  began talking about stuff you hadn't prepared at all. Now, there are those who  claim some biblical support for this practice. And it's this passage here in the  book of Luke, where Jesus is talking about the fact that after he dies, his  followers are going to be persecuted. And they're going to be hauled before a  synagogues and are going to be hauled before of the Sanhedrin. And they're  going to be facing these powers. And they'll have to give a defense for what they are doing. And Jesus says to them, but make up your mind not to worry  beforehand, how you will defend yourself, for I will give you words and wisdom  that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. That's really not  a justification for not preparing. That was a certain situation where they were  facing persecution. And many people in the in the Church of Jesus Christ in the  world are facing persecution, they are called upon to do a defense of  themselves and the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit gives those words but it's not  necessarily applicable to your general work as a preacher. That's going to  require some preparation. How do you prepare? That's one thing I want to say.  Second thing I want to say is, I know that sometimes God does this. This is a  picture of Jim Cymbala presenting a sermon that's not famous. title. The title of  the sermon is, My house shall be called a House of Prayer. He preached it in  1994 in Indiana He preached it as part of what was known as the praise  gathering that Bill and Gloria Gaither are well known musical people in the  church tradition. And here in the United States, they held this three day praise  gathering where people would sing praises, and they would celebrate, but they  also had some preaching. Jim Cymbala as the pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle. In New York was invited to preach. And he had prepared a message. As he was  praying about it the night before he was to preach all of a sudden, he felt God's  saying, No, that's not what I want you to preach Jim. I want you to preach  something else. As all of a sudden, these thoughts start flooding in. And he only  made a few notes. If you watch the sermon, I'm going to, I'll link you to it later.  Because I'm going to use it as a particular kind of sermon an admonition sermon later in this course, and we'll talk about that later. But in this regard, God  sometimes does that. Not been often in my ministry, but occasionally I've had  that experience where I was planning to say one thing, and I was preparing and  I was praying and planning, what I was going to say out very finely and  practicing it and it got to the time of the message, I realized, no, that's not what  I'm supposed to say. Now, that's rare, I think the normal course is this one. Paul  is writing to his son in the faith, Timothy is giving him directions about how to be  a good preacher and a good pastor. And this is what he says, do your best to  present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be  ashamed, and who correctly handles the word of truth. That's, that's God's  direction. Sorry about the duplication of words, I thought I'd fix that just before  this, just before we started recording this session, but that's it, we're going to be 

workman. So in other words, we've got work to do. And we want to be approved, we want to correctly handle the word of truth. That means we have to  understand some things about the Bible, we have to understand some things  about the passages that we are approaching. And so we're going to be looking  at people who prepare to preach. Now there are several aspects to preparing to  preach. Now, one that I considered the most important today, I didn't always  consider all that important. And that is the subject of prayer. How do you pray in  your preparation for a message? I've got to tell you that I didn't grow up in a  strong prayer tradition kind of ministry. In fact, I thought if I just had everything  right, then the sermon would come out. Okay. That all changed for me, as I  thought about what do I pray. Prayer ministry involves my prayers, because I'm  preaching ministry about my prayers over those things that I'm going to be  saying. And we'll talk about what that looks like, in just a moment. What my  attitude toward that changed? In a class I was in Fuller Seminary, in Southern  California working on a doctoral degree, and in that class there were four young  Korean men, and at that time in Southern California, where I lived, you could put five Koreans on a street corner and seems you'd have a thriving church in no  time. I mean, it was just they were exploding, there was a revival going on  among Koreans in Southern California. So during one of the breaks, I went to  these four young men, and we're talking to each other, they were all English  competent. And I simply said, after introducing myself, I said, you know, what's  the secret? What's the secret to your growth in your churches? What's the  secret to the release of the Spirit that you've got? Now I have to tell you, I hoped that they were going to say, well, oh, we got this neat program. And we've got it  all boxed up. And for $140, you can get your copy, and you follow this program  and it''ll happen to you too. That's not what they said. In response, the man who  kind of took the leadership in the conversation said, Tell me about your prayer  life. So I described my prayer life, which turns out was a pretty typical one for  American church pastors. I said, well. You know, I pray in the morning, when I  start my workday, I pray at night when I go to bed, in between time there's  devotions at the table, family has prayers, I pray with my wife, and that's about  it. He said, Let me tell you about my prayer life. He said, Five o'clock in the  morning, he's in his prayer closet now in his office in his church he has actually  built a prayer closet. And he would go in there and he would pray. He would pray about his preparation for for preaching and pray about the church. He prayed  about people in the church and pray about the vision of the church and pray  about the community impact, he'd be in there for an hour. And then at six o'clock in the morning, he'd be joined by other members of the congregation varying  numbers of them, but they would come together and they would pray together  over some of the same topics but they prayed from six until seven. And seven,  they would break and they'd all go home and get ready and go to work. So then  on Friday night, that's the pattern through the through the week, on Friday night, 

they would get together for dinner. And then they'd spend the night in prayer.  They would pray around the clock, take turns and take breaks, but they pray  through Saturday morning. And then Sunday would come. And of course, they  would gather to pray before the service, et cetera. And then he said, in addition  to that, I'm expected to take one to two weeks per year at prayer mountain. Now, there is a place in Korea called prayer Mountain was owned by their Full Gospel Church, led by Paul Young and Cho. And on that mountain, there are these  various booths and where somebody can come and spend some time just to be  alone with God, really alone with God. And now, he said, I go to prayer mountain here in Southern California, Koreans had purchased an area up in the  mountains, and they had populated it with booths. And he was expected to go  there one to two times a year, and spend two to three to four or five days, six  days in prayer. He said, That's the secret. I gotta tell you, I was incredibly  convicted by that. In fact. I went that night, home, and I read through the entire  book of Acts. In fact, that became my doctoral dissertation study of what I call  the fingerprints of God in the book of Acts, how do you know God was working  in that particular church, and one of them was that people pray. They prayed,  they prayed, and they prayed. And then I had to look at my own prayer life. And I realized that I had learned the technical aspects of preaching. But I'd never  learned to pray. So I had to learn my own prayer life, how to enrich my own  prayer life, a book that was very helpful to me was the hour that changes the  world by Dick Eastman, which describes various facets of prayer, and how you  can if you so desire, spend an hour in prayer by going around the clock, these  various facets of prayer, and I, I strongly recommend it to you. But that made me look at my own prayer life and say, What's your prayer life like now? So, if you're going to prepare to preach, you've got to be somebody who prepares by  praying? And what are your own prayers, like you pray during your study, for  God to reveal his word to you. Pray that you might understand not just what God meant, when he had these words written down to the people back then? But  what does it mean to now that you will receive revelation from God in that  regard, you pray during your study, and then you pray for God's word to prevail? I find it fascinating when I looked through scripture, especially the book of Acts  and see how the people prayed, and what they prayed for, look at the verse  from Acts. Now the situation is this. Peter and John have healed the lame man  as they enter the temple, as they're going into the temple. And as a result is a  crowd. Peter preaches the word, right tells them about Jesus Christ. And then  they are arrested. And they are brought before the Sanhedrin. And they're  asked, by what name are you doing this? And they say, Well, Jesus, and you  know, you killed him. And it's a powerful passage, but you get to chapter four  then. And they are responding to that they were released with threats, it says  they were given many threats, that if they do this, there's going to be trouble.  And so what is their prayer? Now, Lord, consider their threats, and enable your 

servants to speak your word with great boldness. As you pray as you are in the  preparation process of your ministry. Pray for your sermons, pray for boldness.  There's another passage that will inform your personal prayers from Isaiah 55  As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without  watering the earth. So is my word that goes out of my mouth, it will not return to  me empty, but will accomplish the purpose for which I sent it. Pray that your  sermon when you present it will be on like rain and snow that will come down  upon parched souls and hearts and minds of people and will water it and will  accomplish the purpose for which God sent it. It will cause the seeds that God  has planted in their hearts and minds and souls to begin to be nurtured and to  grow. To pray God I want that to happen in my preaching ministry. And then this  one from the book of Hebrews. For the word of God is alive and active, sharper  than any double edged sword. It penetrates even to the Divine dividing soul and  spirit joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart.  God, I want my sermon. When it's presented, I want it to pierce through people's protective, protective shields that they put up, I want those who are living with a  secret guilt they've got the secret sins are living to be confronted about that. And to have them changed by the power of the Holy Spirit. I want people who've  been beaten up by life, and feel like they're, they're crippled as they're going  through life. I want the word to pierce through there, and to bring healing and  wholeness to them once again. So, as you're thinking about preparing to preach, don't forget that prayer is part of that. That's all I'm saying. So you pray, you pray your own prayers. That's part of it. But Scripture also tells us we are to seek the  prayers of others. Now, I went through ministry a long time not realizing this.  There's opportunity for people to pray. In fact, my preaching will be more  effective and more powerful. If other people are praying for me, not just me,  myself. And one of the people who's excited me in that area is John Maxwell  wrote a book many years ago, partners in prayer, support and strengthen your  pastor and church leaders. And that book was intended to be a training for the  pastor's prayer partners. Here's a picture of John Maxwell. Now, if you look in  Scripture, here's how this comes up. If you look in Scripture, you'll find that Paul  never felt himself like he could just do the ministry that he would preach and it  would be effective. He asked people to pray for him. Imagine if the Apostle Paul  needed people to pray for him and his preaching, how much do you need it or I  need it? Here's one of those passages from the book of Romans. I urge you  Paul says, Brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the  Spirit to join me in my struggle, by praying for me. Now the word struggle there  is the word agonidzomai if you're very English, proficient, you'll notice that's the  Greek word transliterated. But, though, in that word is the word agony, that Paul  was saying, this ministry of going out and preaching the gospel to people who  have never heard building Gentile churches, has created a struggle that's  created craving in the agony. And it's a struggle that sometimes had him 

physically getting beaten, sometimes had him on shipwrecks. You know the  story of Paul, if you've read through the book of Acts, but he says, Come on, join me pray for me in this. And then he lists several prayer requests. Pray that I may be kept safe from unbelievers in Judea, and that the contribution I take to  Jerusalem will be favorably received by the Lord's people there, so that I may  come to you with joy by God's will, and in your company be refreshed. In other  words, pray for me in my ministry, and then he lists these things he's going to be bringing a gift from Gentile churches to the Christians in Judea, and Jerusalem  area that were going through a famine, and he's saying, pray for me that I might  be effective in that, but I'll be favorably received that not my message will be  received there. And I'm going to come to you in Rome. And I'm going to come  there and be received with joy. And then you can refresh me, I'm, I'm going to be in your company and be refreshed. So this part of refreshment is part of  empowering Paul to do ministry came through prayer, the prayers of other  people, not just his own, Paul didn't say, Well, you know what I've been praying,  I've got it covered, don't worry about it. inviting people to pray with him. here's  what he wrote to the Colossians. Paul had never been in Rome at this point. He  had never been in Colossae. And if he writes to these believers, that he's never  met his praise. He said, Pray that God would open a door for the word to speak  the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in chains. No, it's pray, I realized that  there's got to be doors open for this word to be effective. Pray, pray, you people  in Colossae, when you gather together, pray for Paul. And then this one, from  the book of Ephesians. This is the ending of a passage where Paul has given  the armor of God. And he begins that chapter by saying, you know, our battle is  not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against  the principles of evil against those things that are dark places, and he creates  what some believe a hierarchy of demons, says, Pray, pray, because of that.  And he says, pray in the Spirit with all kinds of requests, prayers, and requests.  And with this in mind, be alert. And always keep on praying for the Lord's  people. Why be alert, well because there's a spiritual warfare going on. And if  you are someone who's preaching, you're engaged in that that's why he was in  agony when he's talking to the people of Rome. There's a spiritual warfare going on. So he said, You'll keep on praying and then he says this I pray also for me,  that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make  known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray  that I may declare fearlessly as I should. Prayer. In other words, prayer, pray for  me that I may have words, pray for me, that I may be fearless. But I won't still be be stopped by the political situation in my particular congregation or among  these people to whom I'm speaking, Pray that I may be bold. You pray for me.  Now a couple of stories in that regard. One is by this man, Tony Kampala. Tony  Kampala was a professor. He is a Baptist preacher, professor at a College in  Pennsylvania. And a member of a church in Pennsylvania came the time that 

longtime pastor who served in that church, it came time for him to retire. He  retired from ministry and there was a search committee established and they  searched and to Tony Kampala's surprise as well as many other in the  congregation. They chose a man who had just young man who just graduated  from seminary. And man came for us candidates weekend. And he preached his  first message there. And that was fair, I guess that's all. So Tony Kampala. If  you've ever listened to any of his speeches and talks, preached sermons, is not  a retiring person, who kind of hangs back, he went to the chairman of the search committee. And he said I talked to him pointedly In other words, he was pointing  his finger, tapping it on his chest. He said, We are a great church with a great  reputation. We have a great influence. We we need a pastor who is a great  pastor, we need somebody who's a great preacher, someone, that's what we've  had, we need a great preacher here. And he said this elderly man who was  chairman of the search committee, looked at him and said, But Tony, he said, we are going to pray him great. And when Tony Kampala tells the story, he says,  and we did. He became great. Imagine that you want to be a great preacher. I  don't think any of us goes into the preaching ministry and says, I really want to  be mediocre in preaching. That's what I really want to do. You know, I want to be Jared, somebody who just gets by, I want to be somebody who makes it. I want  to I want to know, finish my career, or 30 years or whatever. We want to be  people who have an impact. We want to be people whose sermons make a  difference. Now, as I said earlier, in a previous session, one of the joys of retiring was to hear people give some testimony about the effectiveness of ministry.  Many of these people were on my prayer partner list. And they said, You know, I  came to Christ because of your preaching. It wasn't because I'm so great. It's  because people were praying. Others said, you know, that was a time of spiritual growth for me. Well, why? Because people were praying. Those stories about  Charles H. Spurgeon, preached in the 19th century back in England, he was  known as the prince of preachers, books are still sold. And he was one time  giving a tour. Some college students had come from far away to hear him  preach, because I like I say he was known as the prince of preachers. And so  Spurgeon ran into them say, let me give you a tour of the building. And so they  were looking around this large tabernacle, it was built a house growing  congregation that were impacted by Spurgeon's, sermons. And after showing  them around the major parts of the building, Spurgeon said, Do you want to see  the heating plant? One of the world is the heating plant. Why would they want to go down and see the boiler room anyway? The furnace? Why would they want  to go down and see that but they were impressed being in the presence of this  great man. And so they just went along. And they went downstairs, and they  went past the basement. And they went down into a lower basement into the  furnace room, the boiler room. And there they found something like 100 people  they said, on their knees, praying that the service that was going to begin a little 

while would be used by God, to change lives. Now, my point in this, in this  session, is to say to you, if you're going to preach, you need to prepare. If you're gonna preach Well, sometime God may give you that message that is just  something his word from this moment in his kingdom, but most of the time,  you're going to have to prepare and one of the most important things you can do to prepare is to pray and recruit others to pray with you to pray for you. You  know, we're humble people, right? The first time I began to ask people to pray  for me and my ministry, I felt like to whom I should do this, I found people were  eager to do it. Peter Wagner is a church growth expert, as one of my professors  for many years, said that you got to think of prayer partners in three different  levels. The first level is called prayer level one. And that is the people with whom you can share everything, it's with people with whom you have an intimate  relationship. Now, sometimes this can be your spouse, sometimes it's someone  else. For me, it's a man that I've known for many years, I trust him implicitly, and  I can tell him anything about my life, I can tell him anything about my ministry.  And I know he prays for me every single day. And even though now we've been  doing this for years, and now we live in different parts of the United States. And  still, at least once a month, sometimes more often, we're on the phone together.  And we block out an hour and a half, just to talk with, to share and to pray with  each other. That's that level one, intimacy. Find a few of those people, doesn't  have to be many. I once had two now I have one. Then there's the next level,  the second level of prayer support. And in that level you get people who are  committed to praying for you. Now, I didn't advertise for these people. So you  know, you don't say who wants to pray for me, in this congregation who wants to pray for me, I didn't do that very often. You know, I can understand if you're a  missionary, you might do that. Many missionaries do that as they present their  ministry, within the church setting, they'll say, Hey, if you want to get my prayer  letter, you know, sign up, sign up on the dotted line, within the local church, if  you're a local church pastor, then it has some difficulties with it, and that some  people will sign up just because they like to get a lot of news. And they figure  they'll get it from you. And they're gossips. And they'll share that with other  people. And so I had a practice, that was my practice, I don't know what yours  will be. But I had a practice of only putting people on the list that I knew were  people of prayer. And I would grow that list. By hearing somebody say to me,  you know, I pray for you, I pray for you, rightfully. So, you know, I've got a group  of people who do that and I'll add you to the list, and I would send out to them  once a week, it was my practice to send it on Friday. And I would give these  people my schedule for the next week, I'd give them some concerns within the  church, I would talk to them about what I was preaching about, and how they  should be praying for people to receive that, and for the Holy Spirit to use it. And so that was a weekly email that came out and would take me maybe 15 minutes to write it. And yet it released power in the messages that were brought. And 

then level three is the whole church, there are some things you will ask the  whole church to pray for. I'm working in the church right now, in my semi  retirement, in which we're looking at the future. It's had a rough past and a lot of  decline. And so we've created a new plan for the future. And this past Sunday,  we're presenting it to members of the congregation in a town hall kind of  meeting. And at the end of the meeting, where I said, here are the changes  we're making to the organizational system here. Here are the things we're doing  that we're hoping will create a growing trend within this church, one that is  exciting, and one that you can be excited about where people's lives are being  changed. But you have to pray. It's not going to happen if we don't prayer, pray.  And so please be part of this prayer. Pray that God will use the pastor here pray  that God will use this church in a powerful way and that he'll bring people to us  who are in need. That's the kind of thing we say publicly to all those involved.  Now, that's one suggested way to do it. You maybe will have another way. But  as we follow Paul's example. Ask people to pray. Yeah, you got to pray. Certainly you got to pray, but invite others to be part of that journey with you. To believe  me, I don't understand how it works. I don't understand how you know, 10  people are praying is that better than two? I don't know. But I do know that when we are gathered together, and we have come together as two or three or 10 or  15. And in my last group of prayer partners, I had 35 as they're praying, the  power of God is released in a way that doesn't happen if I am praying by myself. And so preparing to preach well, then you better pray and you better get others  to pray too. We'll see you next time as we continue preparing to preach and  looking at what that means.