I’ve been a pastor 30 years and only in the last few have I discovered the value of studying outside my church and home office. I’ll go either  to McDonalds (cheap food) or Panera (good atmosphere and the place I prefer). Both provide free Wi-Fi. I don’t recommend spending all your time away from the office, but I’ve found that doing so at least once a week benefits me and the ministry in these ways.

1. Productivity: Less interruptions from others.
2. Creativity: A different environment spurs it.
3. Focus: Less distractions help me concentrate better (like cleaning up our office or playing with something on our desks that can distract us in our offices).
4. Energy: A different ambiance/atmosphere gives me more.
5. Stress management: I feel less of it in a neutral environment.

One other suggestion. To block out noise, I use ear buds plugged into my iPhone and listen to nature sounds on the Ambiance app.

Have you discovered any other advantages of studying outside the office?

Related posts: The iPhone App that Improved my Concentration

How much time should a pastor spend preparing a sermon?

Recently I watched a video where a rather famous pastor answered that question. His response, “I study and read all the time and it takes me about one to two hours to put a sermon together.”

Yikes! When I heard that I felt guilty because there’s no way I can prepare a sermon that quickly. I’m sure this pastor’s heart was right, but I wish he had qualified himself more. I doubt very many of us are that speedy.

In Haddon Robinson’s book, Biblical Sermons, he wrote that experienced preachers he surveyed spent an average of 16 hours preparing. That sounds more like it to me. That’s probably my average and I’ve been preaching for 25 years.

So, how much time should you spend? It depends.

It depends on…

1. how long you’ve been in ministry. If you been in ministry several years, you have a backlog of study material. If you haven’t you will probably need to set aside more study time. I did in my early ministry years.
2. how well you’ve kept your previous study notes, sermons, and materials upon which to refer back
3. how well you manage your time
4. what’s happening around you. Sometimes unexpected family and ministry demands arise that require our time that we other wise would have spent on sermon prep. No need to wallow in guilt when that happens
5. your personality…some pastors have the gift of gab and can ‘make up stuff on the fly’ , some of us don’t; some personalities require the preacher to process what he wants to say more thoroughly

Here are a few thoughts to consider as you answer this question for yourself.

1. Schedule your study and prep time during your best, most alert hours. (more…)

I’m convinced God gave me a ‘Geek’ gene.

From my monopoly on science fair first prizes in high school to my toy tank that fires bb’s to my radio-controlled helicopter that shoots plastic missiles, I love any gadget that runs on electricity. I’m also among an elite 50,000 who bought the very first Macintosh in 1984. I sold a life insurance policy and used the cash value to pay for it. Since then I’ve owned over 20 different Macs and I now sport a brand new MacBook Air. I also use an iPhone 4 and an iPad.

Like I said, God gave me a geek gene.

At the same time Mac blood has flowed through my veins, God infused into my bones a passion to teach God’s Word. I’ve preached over a thousands sermons and I’ve seen my preaching evolve over the years in this progression.

1. write sermon notes in the margin of a wide column bible (my eyes can’t see teeny-tiny print now )
2. type out the sermon on one half-page and insert into my bible
3. type up the full text and insert small pages into the bible so that it looks like I’m not using notes
4. print out the full text and place the full sized pages on the lectern
5. Preach from an iPad

I love using the iPad now. It took a few weeks to getting used to it, but I don’t think I will ever change. I see three advantages in using an iPad.

1. Easily mark up and highlight on the fly
2. Keep all your sermons in one place
3. You look really cool, especially when the house and stage lights are off…it casts a holy glow on your face

Here’s how I now prepare my sermons and get them to the iPad.

1. I write my sermons on my Mac with Word. Accordance (easy to use and trusty) and Logos (quite expansive yet rather slow and cumbersome at times) are my primary study tools. Note: My iPad still has not replaced my laptop and I don’t expect it to.
2. I save my Word doc as a PDF file
3. I drop the PDF into Dropbox (a free app that allows you to easily move a pc file to the iPad via shared wi-fi)
4. I open up the PDF in Dropbox and then open it in Noterize ($2.99). Many PDF markup programs exist. This one tends to be a bit slow in turning the pages, but thus far it works best for me. I would love to use Apple’s Pages program, but at this point they don’t offer highlighting options.
5. I then mark up, highlight, and make changes as needed. Our service production team always has a paper copy available in case my iPad goes down.

Here’s a screen shot of what an iPad page looks like.

If you are an iPad user, what apps do you use for preaching? Any tricks you’ve learned?

Related posts:

• How an iPad improved my devotional life
• How Pastors can benefit from an iPad

This is an abbreviated text of my 2009 Christmas message I gave during our annual Christmas program.

Note: our entire Christmas program was written by Kyle Zehr, our church’s worship leader. It follows the story of a girl named Emma who was given up for adoption at birth and her search for her birth dad. It takes place on the set of a community acting troupe performing a version of the play ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ Also, this text has not been proofed for perfect grammar.

Pastors always feel a bit anxious when Christmas comes around for this reason. We wonder how can we bring a fresh take on the Christmas story. The program you are experiencing tonight gives us fresh lens through which we can see the Christmas story—through the lens of adoption.

Adoption is big in our culture. Sandra Bullock starred in the movie, The Blind Side that has as its theme adoption. A new ABC reality show called Find my Family, reunites families separated by adoption.

The bible often speaks about adoption. Of the three examples in the OT, the most tender one that pictures the love and grace of God when He adopts someone into His family is seen when King David adopted a crippled boy as his son. The NT mentions adoptions several times as well.

In the ancient Roman world where the Christian faith began, adoption was common and primarily for the parents sake unlike today when the purpose is for the benefit of the child. Then adoption occurred primarily to carry on the family’s names, pass on the inheritance, and have someone to take care of parents in old age. The common person understood the concept. The Apostle Paul writes about it here.

Rom. 8.15 So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”

A Roman slave owner could adopt a slave. The result was that the slave was freed from the bondage of slavery and the fear of his master. Now, no longer a fearful slave, but a son. The Scripture I just read says that this new relationship was so intimate the term Abba was used, an endearing term for father, papa. You don’t call someone you are afraid of, papa.

This practice in Romans days parallels what happens when God adopts us. Because of sin we are alienated/separated from God (slavery to sin). When God adopts us he makes us his son or daughter, frees us from this bondage to sin and fear and addictions and we now have this new warm relationship with him so close we can approach Him as PaPa without fear. We then experience his love just like adopted children experience the love of their new parents.

Also, if I lived in that day and had no son I could adopt the son of in another family if they had two sons (and they gave permission). In doing so, I would release from that son any future debt he would be responsible for from that family. The adoption would wipe away any debt.

This practice illustrates spiritual adoption, God’s adoption of us. The bible says that sin puts us in debt to God and this debt carries with it eternal consequences—eternity apart from Him. Yet, when God adopts someone, the debt of sin and penalty of that sin is wiped clean, done away with. When God adopts us, he removes this debt of sin.

So just as a Roman through could free someone from the bondage of slavery and remove their debt through adoption, from a spiritual perspective, when God adopts us, he frees us from this slavery to our sin, fears, and addictions, removes the debt of sin that eternally separates us from Him, and gives us a new intimate relationship with Him, our PaPa.

So, how does God adopt someone? That’s where Christmas comes in.

I did some research on adoption and learned this. Those of you who have adopted already know this: it is expensive and time consuming—background checks, home visits by adoption agency, applications that must filled out and on and on.

Adoption is also one way. 100% the work, effort, and cost is born by the parents who want to adopt that child. The orphan does not earn adoption nor perform to get it or pay for the privilege of it. The power and the reason for adoption is all bound up in the heart of the parents to be.

Parents will go to literally the ends of the earth to adopt a child, pay tens of thousands of dollars, invest thousands of hours of effort so that they can adopt a child… for one reason: love. A parent wants to give away the love in their heart to a child.

That same reason has motivated God to make a way for us to be His child, only God’s love is so deep that it’s difficult to fathom what He did to make our adoption possible. The bible puts in this way.

Gal. 4.4 But when the right time came, (Roman world was like U.S., advanced civilization, but in moral crisis) God sent his Son, (Christmas-Jesus birth, God becoming a man) born of a woman (fully human, He knows what it’s like living with  pain and hurt and sorrow, he’s not aloof from it) subject to the law.  5 God sent him to buy freedom for us (remember that parents pay the full price, not the orphan) who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children.

One of the privileges of adoption is that the adopted child will eventually share in the inheritance as if he were related by blood. But for an inheritance to be put into effect, usually death has to occur.

A death, a payment had to happen in order for God to make spiritual adoption possible.

God took the initiative to graciously and lovingly seek out unworthy humanity (you and me) to offer to us the greatest gift possible—to become God’s child, to be adopted into His family, to be freed from the slavery, penalty, and debt of sin, to be free from our fears and our addictions, not on the basis our merit (remember an orphan doesn’t earn adoption but must simply receive it), but on the basis of what God has done out of his love for us. We must receive God’s offer to become His child.

Just as a parent goes to great lengths to adopt a child, God went to the unfathomable length of sending his son Jesus to earth (Christmas) to go die on a cross to pay for our sins (good Friday) and then to be raised from the dead to give us life eternal (Easter).

God did that so that we might be his child, have our sins forgiven, and share in this wonder spiritual inheritance-a bounty of blessings in this life and the next.

God made us to want this relationship with Him. Pascal, one of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived and a follower of Jesus said that there is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of all of us.

Emma’s search for her father reflects the desire in all of us to belong, have a family that accepts us, a father who loves us, a place of safety, security … a place our hearts can call home.

Jesus makes this possible.

At Christmas, at least for a moment, the word tunes to the spiritual. For many people at Christmas hearts and souls warm up to God a bit.

I hope that your heart will open up tonight and that you will consider becoming a child of God, being adopted into His family because of what Jesus did.