TPC Pillars : Excellent Preparation
This is part three of a six-part series on our six Preaching Co. Pillars.
The other day a friend of mine was excited to tell me of the powerful sermon he had heard at the church they attended that Sunday. The word was explained with clarity, applied with precision, and preached with power. As they walked out of the service my friend commented to his son-in-law on what a powerful message it was. His son-in-law replied immediately in succinctly with these words, “Yeah, it was evident he prepared this week. You can tell the weeks the preacher prepares and the weeks he doesn’t.”
What a statement.
The call to preach the word is a call to week after week bring yourself before the text for rigorous, worshipful, brain-draining, soul-pouring-out preparation. We may stand to preach on Sunday, but we must wrestle in the prep all the week long.
There is no craft or job in life that just happens without excellent preparation. On a trip to Israel about a decade ago between stops on our tour of biblical sites, we stopped into a potter’s workshop. We stood in silent amazement as we watched this man work his hands around a lump of clay to turn it into a beautiful, functional pitcher. He worked methodically, carefully, intentionally with great focus as the wheel turned to take an unusable lump of clay and mold it into a valuable, functional piece of earthenware. As this potter worked, all around him in his shop sat dozens upon dozens of pots, bowls, and pitchers, each handcrafted from a lump of clay into its usable form with the same level of preparation and precision.
Preaching is no different. Yes, we believe in the power of prayer. Yes, nothing happens unless God comes and moves powerfully. Yes, we are desperate for the Spirit’s work and not preaching that relies on our rhetoric or wisdom. These truths, though, call us to the joy of rigorous, intentional, worshipful, Spirit-led preparation week in and week out in the crafting of sermons. Each week we bring ourselves to the desk and the chair to do the hard work of preparing a meal from the scriptures to feed God’s people.
Pillar 3: Excellent Preparation
The third pillar of The Preaching Co. is:
Excellent Preparation: Establishing a clear and intentional process to prepare biblical sermons.
In the content we produce we want to help men establish their preparation process. There are tools we will provide as a ministry to help men understand how to study the word in order to preach it, and also how to effectively structure their week to prioritize sermon prep. We will also train in our cohorts, courses, and coaching on the essential parts of sermon preparation. Finally, there is a structure we have here at The Preaching Co. for how to write sermon manuscripts that will stay tethered to the text and engage the hearts of our people. In each of our cohorts, courses, and coaching, we spend the most training time on sermon preparation because there is no good preaching without good preparation.
Often as we are first getting started in our preaching ministry, we grasp and try different methods, models, and processes for sermon preparation. It is our hope that our ministry can give you some solid structure and direction for what a clear and intentional process to prepare biblical sermons.
