Getting your pastoral life organisedPosts in this series
In this post I want to continue to encourage you to have multiple calendars, including a Sermon Tasks calendar.
Preparing for a sermon is enjoyable. If it wasn't, I probably wouldn't be a minister. Yet it is also hard work and requires a good deal of self-discipline if you are to avoid procrastination and get everything done.
This is where a list of sermon preparation tasks for each day is most helpful. And I find this is best maintained by yet another calendar with repeating weekly tasks.
What goes on your Sermon Tasks calendar?
Some tasks are completed every day that I prepare my sermon:
- prayer (for which I use a list of sermon preparation prayer points);
- writing/editing the manuscript - done twice daily;
- memorisation of the passage - done twice daily.
Other tasks are done on one particular day. These include:
- reading of hard copy commentaries from my own library;
- reading of soft copy (PDF) commentaries which I have downloaded from the internet;
- reading of hard copy commentaries from a local theological college library;
- looking up and reading Greek/Hebrew Grammars and systematic theologies that have indexed verses from my sermon passage.
So by carefully preparing and dividing up the tasks evenly over the week I find that by the time Saturday comes around, I am fairly well prepared for Sunday. Last minute panics are mostly a thing of the past.
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