{"id":753670,"date":"2021-08-13T05:00:33","date_gmt":"2021-08-13T10:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/?p=753670"},"modified":"2021-08-11T06:04:39","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T11:04:39","slug":"the-four-corners-of-sermon-prep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/the-four-corners-of-sermon-prep\/","title":{"rendered":"The Four Corners of Sermon Prep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everyone has their method for preparing a sermon. I\u2019ve read books and talked with many pastors about their approaches to sermon prep and it varies greatly. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019ve taken nuggets from many places and landed on a method of sermon prep that works well for me.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> If I had to name it, I\u2019d call my method \u201cThe Four Corners Method.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I start my sermon prep by printing out the passage on a single blank sheet of paper. On each corner of the paper, I write the following headings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Top Left Corner: Big Picture, Big Action, Big Inspiration<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Top Right Corner: Verse Groupings<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bottom Right Corner: Illustrations<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bottom Left Corner: Applications<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I start with the top right corner. I read through the text several times and find the natural breaks in the text. Each group of verses become their own point in my sermon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From there, I pour into the text itself. As I read the text repeatedly, I make notes all over the white page. As I study, I put notes from different commentaries on the paper. The result is a page full of notes where the Holy Spirit led my time of study.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I then fill out the top left corner. I seek to answer 3 questions about the passage:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is the big picture of the passage? What is the main idea? This becomes my central idea for the entire sermon. Each point (which comes from the verse groups) points back and supports this central idea.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is the big action of the passage? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I want my congregation to walk away with one action; one thing they are supposed to do.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is the big inspiration of the passage? I try to answer the question: what would happen if everyone carried out the big action of the passage? I use that answer to inspire my congregation.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bottom two corners typically fill themselves out naturally. As I\u2019m studying, I\u2019ll think of illustrations and applications. I write them down as they come. When I am writing out my final preaching outline, I\u2019ll plug these into the sermon in the appropriate places.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This whole process has not only cut down on the time I previously spent in sermon prep, but it has added a much-needed baseline to my sermons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let me add one more major aspect of my sermon prep: prayer. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No matter what approach to sermon prep you use, make prayer the beginning, middle, and ending to your approach.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> If you miss prayer, then your sermon will miss on Sunday morning.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone has their method for preparing a sermon. I\u2019ve read books and talked with many pastors about their approaches to sermon prep and it varies greatly. I\u2019ve taken nuggets from many places and landed on a method of sermon prep that works well for me. If I had to name it, I\u2019d call my method&#8230;","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":753672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"1","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,186,192,177,194,176],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-753670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-answers","category-health-and-metrics","category-how-to","category-lead","category-preaching","category-revitalize"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Four Corners of Sermon Prep | Church Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Everyone has their method for preparing a sermon. 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