Ancient Truth | Modern Sound

Origins - Part 2 from crosspt media on Vimeo.

A CALL TO PREACH
A few months ago Pastor Matt asked me if I would be willing to give the message on the 5th of July. He doesn’t know this, but my emotions split in two directions. Part of me jumped up and down with excitement, I went to school 25 years ago to study the Bible and to someday be a pastor/teacher. The desire to stand up in front of a group of people and tell them about Jesus and God’s word has been burning in me for a long time, probably since I was twelve years old. However, another part of me was filled with dread, like I just found out that I would be having major surgery - in front of 1200 people. Pastor Matt and Pastor Bill set the bar really high and the thought of being measured by their standard is daunting. I told him that I would love to give it a shot.

It was a while before the series and topics were solidified. We settled on a series called ORIGINS, a series that would look at several of the stories of people in the Bible and retell their stories with an emphasis on the big theological ideas that they teach us. Once I found out that I was going to be speaking on the subject of Abraham and the covenant I started thinking about how to prepare.

I’m writing this article as a sort of “bonus feature” to the sermon that I delivered on July 5th.

WRITING THE SERMON
The first thing I did was a search the Bible for the word Abraham. I wanted to read every passage in the Bible that mentioned him. He is in a lot of them. I prefer to listen to the Bible, and I have a few audio versions, so I collected all of the passages where he was mentioned and made an iPod playlist. The playlist was about 3 hours long.I would listen to God’s word and make notes. Anything that I found to be interesting. I wasn’t looking for order, I was just writing anything that jumped out at me or occurred to me. Little notes like, “Sarai must have been really beautiful,” and “Abraham never saw much of the promise that God spoke to him.”I had several pages of notes.Then I searched through some blogs and sermon databases of preacher/teachers that I am fond of. I’ll admit it, I listen to sermons on my iPod all the time for fun. Some of my favorites are Doug Wilson, Kemper Crabb, Mark Driscol, Matt Chandler, and Ravi Zacharius. I looked for some messages where they had talked about Abraham and found a few. Pastor Matt also sent me a sermon that he had given on Abraham a few years ago.

By this time I had far more information that I could ever use in one message, and it was time to figure out what I was actually going to say. I asked God to guide me. I thought about our congregation and our community. The message started to take shape. I was going to concentrate on believing God’s promises as we wait in the space between. I was also going to show how the promises given to Abraham were fulfilled in Jesus, and how all Christians are heirs to that promise.

The first draft of the sermon was far too long. I had to simplify, get to the essential center of the message. This meant that some really cool stuff was left on the editing room floor. A sermon is like a short story, you don’t introduce any ideas that are not vital to the big point. A sermon is not a novel, where you can develop sub-plots, minor characters, intricate foreshadowing, etc. Those kind of things are best saved for a Bible study/teaching format.

I had to lose most of the literary exegetical components, even though they were really cool.Here is an example of the kind of things I had to cut. Although they are fascinating and cool, they are not essential to the bottom line of the message I was delivering. Moses wrote the book of Genesis to encourage and instruct the children of Israel while they were wandering in the desert preparing to enter the Promised Land. They followed the presence of God as he appeared to them as a cloud by day and a fire by night. When God appeared to Abraham as a smoking pot - cloud, and a flaming torch - fire, the original audience knew right away that it was God. They saw Him take a similar form every day. In the message I simple say that God appeared to Abraham and passed through the animals to “sign” the covenant for both of them. As soon as you mention the “smoking pot and flaming torch” you have to add ten minutes of explanation, and you run the risk of side-tracking the message.

I also had to condense Abraham’s story. The name change from Abram (Exalted Father) to Abraham (Father of Many/Multitudes) is mostly missing. I mention that Abraham’s name meant “Exalted Father” but that is misleading. The purpose of this message was not to give a chronological account of his life.

In my original draft I didn’t have any personal stories. I’m not saying that every sermon has to have personal stories, but maybe they should. God gives us our lives, and He expects us to share what He gives us with others. On Saturday (before I gave the message on Sunday) I added the portion about my conversion. I think it set up the message and made it stronger, by adding some personal testimony.I went over the message with Pastor Matt Popovits, my friend Rob Camper (Creative Director at CrossPoint), my wife Kim Hart, they helped me find the center of the message and say it clearly. They also helped me know what needed more explanation, what was funny and what was just confusing. I sent the draft to Pastor Bill, and he helped me reword a few places to articulate CrossPoint’s mission more clearly.

PREPARATION TO DELIVER
Finally, I had to prepare to deliver the message. Writing the message is one thing, but in an attractional ministry like ours, the way the message is delivered is half the point. The message has to be delivered in a way that truly engages the congregation. I can’t just stand up there and read my message.I recorded myself reading the sermon. I tried to do it the way I actually wanted it to be “performed.” It took several attempts. I would record it, listen back, make notes about what I thought was terrible, and try again. I came up with some humorous voices and worked on timing.

Eventually, I had a recording that I thought was passable. I listened to this recording until I could say the message word for word along with the recording. I videotaped myself giving the message and tried to think about body language, what to do with my hands, etc. I’m not an expert on these things, I just didn’t want to get in the way of what God wanted to say through me.I formatted by manuscript in blocks with big bold headings. I indented scriptures and highlighted them, anything that I could give myself permission to simply read, so that it was easy to find. I worked with Rob and we came up with some interesting visuals and captions to accentuate what I was saying on the screens. We used images from Bible comic books.

So there you have it. That was my process. Does it seem like a lot for a 30 minute sermon? Maybe it seems like I left something out. I’d be interested in hearing about any techniques that you do (or have heard of) that I didn’t employ.