How I Prepare My Sermons

all right hello and good afternoon out there to everyone welcome my name is father Anthony Meza and thank you so much for tuning in to my weekly Wednesday scope right here today I will be speaking about a topic which as I wrote about my blog this morning a topic that I get asked about a lot which is you know how I prepare my sermons and and kind of what is the process behind what most people see what what you see on Sundays how do I prepare that stuff okay where does it come from and kind of the process that I use the system and I use it today I'm gonna speak about that process and answer whatever questions you might have on it and I'm also going to do something a little bit different today as well okay I'm going to I one of the things I get a lot of questions on here and get a lot of questions on my blog and I realized that I do those Q&A scopes every so often hi Jonathan from Boise welcome nice to have you on here I do the Q&A scopes every so often but I get a lot of questions I'm not always able to get to them so what I'm gonna do starting today is I'm going to start off every scope just by answering a question or two that people have sent me so if you would ever like to get a question answered you don't want to wait for a special Q&A scope you can either on Twitter or on my blog post for the day you can just write a question on there and today what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna answer one of the questions that I didn't get to last week last week I did a Q&A scope and I had a ton of questions that I couldn't get to them all so that's what I'm gonna do today but before I do I'm sorry I forgot to say hello I told you my name Thank You Miriam from Egypt I saw Sandra Sandra 246 okay is on there to tell me who is there and where does you're coming in from Salam from Calgary welcome you're Steen a happy peace to the Apostle saying to you so it from Minnesota mirror from Charlotte a clear from Shin Sheldon Iowa Aaron from Norway a DM from Canada you've seen there from Canada faithful Tait to always regular great to see you Matt from Seattle welcome nice to have you he we from Merrill and Matt from Edmonton aka mr. fancy-pants Oh like the name risky risky from Australia Mina from Bayonne Rosie from Maryland nice to have all you joining if you would like to share this scope there's a very easy way that you can do that I see reddit from Maryland Mike from Minnesota Stephanie from Woodbridge s TSA woohoo mihari from Seattle where do you find your blog you find my blog at father Anthony calm that's fr Anthony calm Michael from Stockholm Sweden if you want to share this scope you can easily do that like ROS you just did by swiping right across the stream and sharing it with your social networks on Twitter on Facebook or whatever it is you got connected John says your real life Jedi Knight I'll take that as a compliment I'm not a real Jedi Knight but happy - happy to fill the role of if need be I Carla hi Michael from where and nice to see you guys so what I'm gonna do today as I said is I'm gonna talk about the subject that I wrote about my blog how I prepare my service but before that I'm gonna just answer a question and I said every week I will answer one or two questions at the start of my scope and you can submit those questions just via Twitter or you can do that on my blog as well so somewhat last weekend at Q&A scope and I had a ton of questions and I wasn't able to get to them all and I'm sorry there was a really good one that I wanted to get to because I thought it was a very valuable one and that is by someone named V okay and V is referencing the clear the air series which is a series we just finished up at church not last Sunday the Sunday before so it's a four-part series which I highly recommend if you or someone you know walked away from God at any point in time in your life or distance yourself from God or from the church I highly highly highly recommend that you check out that series because the whole point was sometimes the God that you walked away from never existed to begin with anyway a lot of people walked away from God for reasons that simply aren't true okay misperceptions or misunderstandings or whatever it may be so V asked the following question he said I want to thank you specifically for your recent series clear the air because it came just in time then he lists three questions I get asked one okay how accurate is the Adam and Eve story does the church see it as completely literal or are there some are are there some symbolic elements in it or is it entirely symbolic so is the story of Adam and Eve literal some symbolic or entirely symbolic okay I was in the conversation with a close friend of mine who was doing her PhD in a research-based science major and she was saying that science clearly proves that the Adam and Eve story is not possible to have happened therefore it is symbolic I also know that the Catholic Church has declared that the story is indeed symbolic they taught us so in Catholic school but I am Not sure so what is the truth about this first things I don't know what the Catholic Church teaches I went to Catholic school many moons ago and I don't know what they teach about the story of Adam Eve so if you say so but I don't know I am I don't remember hearing that they teach that it's symbolic but anyway I don't know but but he asked a good question okay is the story of Adam and Eve literal symbolic or somewhere in between I'll answer it this way okay I'll say that the story okay one of the things that we talk about often in the Orthodox Church is things that are that are invisible but still real okay so invisible doesn't mean symbolic I'm not talking about Adam and Eve iam I'm talking about like the sacraments alright we're talking about like the Eucharist we're talking about confession we're talking about baptism things are happening which cannot be seen but that doesn't mean there's symbolic it just means they're invisible so invisible doesn't mean symbolic okay said another way in here I have a brain can you cannot see my brain so my brain is invisible to you however if you had the right tool or the right technology you could see my brain it would no longer be invisible because it's real but you just can't necessarily see it so what I'm trying to do is create this idea in your mind that just because something is invisible doesn't mean that it's symbolic okay so that's kind of the foundation here's what I'll say about the story of Adam and Eve someone said science clearly proves the Adam and Eve story is not possible to have happens I don't know what that means yeah I don't really understand what that means does that mean that every detail okay clearly didn't happen or does that mean that Adam and Eve could never have existed because I don't even know what that means how can science prove that you people didn't exist I don't really know what that means here's what I'll say is our view of the story of Adam and Eve it is real but it is not symbolic okay it is real it is not symbolic but it is also not literal okay it is real it's not symbolic it's real symbol a symbol means something that represents something else so it's not a symbol okay it's real Adam and Eve are real people and they were really created by God and placed in a quote-unquote Garden okay and they had an interaction with God we believe that it is real but we don't believe that it's literal meaning when it says that they were placed into a garden that doesn't mean that I can draw a picture of the garden the way I know a garden to be maybe God's definition of garden is different than my definition of garden maybe in fact not I want say maybe but we know for sure that anything that happened before the fall okay the world did not look like it would looks today so when you talk about a serpent then it's not like a serpent today a tree then is not necessarily like a tree today it could be but not necessarily a fruit that is not like a fruit today a man then is not like a man today a woman then is not like a woman today anything that happened pre the fall the world today looks different the earth looks different everything looks different so with that said here's how I'll answer your question there V we believe like I said that the story about a minute Eve is real that God did create man and he created woman he created them in His image and he interacted with them and they rebelled against him through the deception of the evil one okay and because of that there was a consequence of their of their rebellion we believe that is 100% real but we don't believe that the details are literal like even just a simple example first day second day third day fourth day we don't believe that the world was created in six literal days okay six real days but not literal days and what's the difference you have to ask God I mean it's that only God knows because we know that with God the days as a thousand years and thousand years as one day okay so that's my answer to you V is that the story of Adam and Eve we would look at as real but not necessarily literal okay and hopefully that helps address that and that can help address a lot of other things that sometimes we struggle with as well like I said creation how can it be creation six-days creation we believe everything was created by God and we believe that in six real days but we don't believe a real day literally means 24-hour period okay so only that helps yeah okay if you got more questions do you want me to answer like I said every week on my scope I will begin the first five minutes my answer question you can ask on via Twitter or via my blog now let me get to today's topic okay today I'm talking about preaching and everywhere I go people want to ask me this okay how is it that you prepare your sermons all right what's what's like the the magic formula okay or what do you like do you go into some kind of Batcave and like what's the process I'm gonna share that today and it's not as secretive and magical as you think but the important thing okay so that we start off this discussion okay I take great pride is not the right word I place great value and importance on the role of preaching to me preaching is more than just fill up 15-20 minutes in the middle of the liturgy or just keep people busy after church okay to me preaching is an incarnation 'el Act okay incarnation 'el is what happened when God took flesh okay incarnation means God took flesh God came God came in a form that man could see and touch and feel and was relevant to his or her life alright God came down and took our form incarnation 'el well I believe that when I preach that's an incarnation Act I believe that the divine truths eternal truths are to be made manifest and real through my simple language okay and there was a nice quote from Saint efrem the syrian okay he talks about why preaching is an incarnation 'l act and he says that jesus entered the womb of mary through her ear right and he was making a point to say basically that preaching is God entering the hearts of people through their ears just as he entered in the womb of Virgin Mary through her ear okay the angel proclaimed the good news to her okay and and and and through her ear Christ took form inside her okay and that's what we're called to do as preachers now when I see preachers I don't just mean priests I mean if you are a teacher if you are a sunday-school teacher if you are a mother or a father to be honest okay well we're gonna talk about here today I can find relevance in this and just about every aspect of life if you're someone who's trying to influence other people that you're a preacher okay and and the importance of preaching Romans chapter 10 verse 14 how then shall they call on him and whom they have not believed and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard and how shall they hear without a preacher so here everything we do in Christianity is to all to build people's faith in God well how will people believe I'm sorry how people call in him whom they haven't believed how will they believe and whom they have not heard house are they here if we don't open our mouths and preach the Word of God so I leave that preaching is a divine human encounter not just passing the time I put great emphasis on it and that's why the first thing that I must say all right this is the thing that sometimes people you know don't believe or don't agree with or I don't know but I say this okay some people say to me you have a great gift of preaching people say that to me like you have a gift of preaching and for sure I can't take credit and for sure like God like different people have different gifts but also I put a lot of work into this thing too but that's what I try to tell people sometimes I don't like to say that cuz it makes me sound kind of like full of myself a little but I don't mean it that way I need in such a way that don't just sit there and say well father Anthony's gifted he gives good sermons and me I'll never I put a lot of work into this okay and I put a lot of time and if you sometimes I tell people how much time I put into this thing I can't believe it for that much time but to me it's worth it I'll tell you why I'm just I'm I'm a math guy if I preach if sermon free 15-minute sermon to 200 people okay 15 minutes armed into 200 people is the equivalent of 3,000 minutes of speaking okay because I talked to you for 15 minutes you 15 minutes you 15 minutes so my 15 minutes is equivalent to 3,000 minutes of preaching okay in 3,000 minutes if you do the math is 50 hours so the amount of time that I invest in that 15 minute sermon 15 minute sermon will bear the same amount of fruit as 50 hours of conversations of outreach and visitations and one-on-ones and whatever it may be so to me though 15 minutes are SuperDuper important because there I can really make a big impact in a very short amount of time that's why I put a lot of work into this stuff okay and I would encourage you to then before you say I don't have the gift of preaching no one starts off and says they have the gift of preaching okay no one likes no one says I enjoy it okay I remember the first time they put me up there in front of people to give a sermon you to ask me do you have to give I'd say no way no how I was a computer IT consultant guy work with database now I was talking front people all right but you kind of get thrown in the ocean and God provides but you also got to put in your work okay we never negate one for the other so wait that's it all right here is not my my system and as far as like a strict system for preparing sermons but kind of my mindset to how I prepare my sermons okay and I don't follow it strictly every time again it's not like it's not like a you know you plug one than the two of them three but kind of how I envisioned the idea of giving sermons okay like I said you're salesmen I think this applies to you you are giving a presentation at work I think this applies to you you're trying to convince your children all right to to obey or listen or whatever I think this applies in all aspects that you are trying to influence or persuade other people all right and the model that I that I gave on my blog this morning is it's like building a sandwich I love Subway restaurants okay when you go to Subway all right are you any one of these you know Chipotle or cava or whatever maybe there's certain steps that you have to go through to get the sandwich at the end or the burrito or the taco or the whatever it may be and I follow a similar formula when it comes to my sermons all right four easy steps or what about it on my blog step number one is the easiest slash hardest slash most important and that is any time you go to Subway you start with the meat okay you start with the meat you say I want to tune this up or I want a ham and cheese sub or I want a other roasted chicken or whatever maybe you start with the meat and the meat of your sermon is you need to be able to distill down no matter how long you're gonna talk a 1 hour 10 minutes done really matter you need to distill down your entire message to one single central idea and you need to be able to write it in one sentence okay and sometimes even sentences are not as good as phrases all right but you need to be able to distill it down the point of my sermon is blank it needs to be something that is memorable okay it needs to be something that is clear alright and kind of self-explanatory it needs to be something that says excuse me if I'm in your audience and I'm buying everything that you're selling everything that you're selling I'm buying I'm a hundred percent convinced how is my life any different how's my life any different I need to be able to distill it down to one point all right and if I can't just like if I'm not clear about the main message that I'm trying to preach how in the world are you gonna be clear about it I need to know okay and that I always start with this is like what's the main message and just so you know the main message doesn't always start cutesy and fun and and rhyming or begins with a like sometimes it's just a world this is what I'm trying to get across from this okay like I said that last series the main messaging entire series was is then what if you walked away from a God who never existed to begin with okay that was the main message and everything I'm preaching everything has to go back to that message so if I want to tell this story but it doesn't really fit with this why I'm gonna tell the story and if I want to say this like this little piece of knowledge of this by Blink it has to fit into this main message and if this doesn't match this then this has got to go alright what's the main message what's the central point that you're trying to communicate don't don't preach a sermon until you are clear on what that is okay because you're just going to confuse other people and yourself that's number one start with the meat what's the main idea number two you go to Subway you say I would like a meatball sub and then they ask you what veggies you'd like honors so your next thing number two is you choose your veggies alright when I say choose your veggies here's what I mean I mean you come up with two to four depending on your time like a 10 minute sermon 20 minute sermon and 1/2 hour like depends to to four principles not points can't believe very very strongly in this is you you teach two to three principles or so you preach two to four principles not points points are kind of how we grew up hearing sermons today I will speak about forgiveness point number one point number two point number three today we'll have a lesson about life of st. Paul point number one point number two point number three okay we hate points all right if you've ever been nice there's certain people I know that preach everything is my point okay and they'll preach the top 17 points as to why we should forgive our neighbor or something like that and they you hate those sermons and so do I no one likes points principles are different points are boring points are predictable principles are timeless truths which are applicable to every single person regardless of their circumstance for example okay physics let's just take the world of physics then I'll go world and Bible world of physics there are you could say you know what gravity equals and I don't know what the formula is you know I don't know equals MC squared I know what gravity is okay and that's a good point okay or you could say about this law or this or this law but if you could somehow turn that into a principle I think it'd be much easier to explain and memorize for example I don't know if formula for gravity is but I'll tell you a principle of gravity what goes up must come down that's a principle what goes up must come down that's a principle okay not all it's not a point it's a principle and it's something that sticks in your mind and it's something that has universal application anything that I pick up that goes up is gonna come down okay so we need to do is turn our preaching into principles things that apply regardless of whether or not you fully understand how they apply but you know that they are true I'll give you an example I came up with an example all right let's say the story of Jonah all right Jonah's story that we all know about the guy who God told him to go preach the Ninevites and he ran away from God the whale swallowed him up spit him up etc all right if I was gonna do the story of Jonah in four points be very easy I would break it up by the four chapters and I would say the call of Jonah the rebellion of Jonah I would say the inter God's intervention in Jonah's life and a number for the repentance of Jonah okay the call of Jonah the rebellion of Jonah God's intervention the repentance of Jonah Bowl ring no one wants to hear that kind of sermon but let me tell you the same story through a few principles now points I would say one of the points that I would one of the principals sorry I would say for Jonah is God waits to speak for those who want to hear God waits to speak to those who want to hear okay that's a principle all right well now don't you care about Jenner don't care about Jonah you want God to hear you God waits I'm sorry you want God to speak to you God waits to speak until we're ready to hear that's a principle another principle okay a simple one is you cannot outrun God you can't outrun God no matter how hard you try you can't outrun God that's a principle okay not the rebellion of Jonah who cares about that I care about you can't outrun God how about the other one he is a fool who thinks he's wiser than God that's a principle and those are universally applicable regardless of you what you believe or don't believe okay so you start with the meet the main point and then you go through two to four principles third step is you take each of those principles okay what I call spread the veggies you now have your meat you now have your veggies your principles now you take each of the principles and you expand on them and you spread them out how you do four things you state your principle explain your principle apply your principle illustrate your principle all right state explain apply illustrate not necessarily in that order okay but you have to do those four things so let's go back to one of the principles said earlier you cannot outrun God you have to state that at some point in time okay you have to explain that you have to explain what that means you may bring some Bible verses you may tell the story of a character from the Bible you may go through the passage and like whatever you explain what you mean by that okay and you go through kind of your description of it but then don't make like we usually do the explaining but don't skip out on the illustrating and the applying and again it doesn't need to be in this order but applying your principle here's where you need to learn how to say the same thing in different ways all right preaching a good sermon is all about saying the same thing in different ways your main idea in different ways so let's take that illustrate that the point the principle of you cannot outrun God so I don't want you to say you cannot outrun God because I need to repeat it so it sinks in people's head I need to apply it to people too so I'll say him you can't hide I'll say you can't hide from God at work you can't hide from God at school you can't hide from God in your social life said the same thing three different ways but it's sticking in there now and then I would apply and such and say you know what sometimes we try to throw ourselves into work and we throw ourselves into our social lives and we throw ourselves into money or pleasure or whatever maybe as a way to try to escape God all right so now I'm like not just saying cannot outrun gum but I'm applying it well maybe that's me then I tell a story I illustrate and say you know what there was a time in my life where I thought that if I didn't go to church I never had to face God and I tell that story and people love the stories people remember the stories more than anything else and I'll say the story about how I thought or what I'm smarter than God because I'm gonna escape God I've never liked Jonah who knows about Jonah and whales and whatnot but I know I was hiding from God by not going to church thinking that he couldn't see me there how foolish was our all right so there's your principles there's your main idea there's your two to four principles and you expand on each one and then the last step is you put the bread on your sandwich with an introduction and a conclusion and I usually do it the opposite usually do conclusion introduction is usually the last thing that I write when it comes to my sermons conclusion let's start with that conclusion okay I love lawyer movies and I always wanted to be a lawyer lawyers know that in your closing argument you don't introduce new ideas you don't hold your final piece of evidence till your closing argument closing argument is just your final appeal to the jury and it's only recapping and tying together what you have spoken about this far okay so conclusion of the sermon not a time to introduce new idea or new concept seven another way think of it like a plane that you have kind of taken off all right and now you're landing the plane some people okay they keep going up and up and up and up and they just say sermons over enough okay and you kind of crash the plane no no go easy on the people okay ascend up hit your climax and then bring the people down slowly and send them back off okay so conclusion kind of times the loser lose ends introduction catching people's attention okay your goal in the introduction is to start with the needs of the people not with your brilliant outline and today I'm going to talk to you about you know these five points okay your goal is to convince the listener that there's some benefit to what you're about to say and there's some relevance and some people say you know we shouldn't be speaking to the needs of the people but speaking the truth well let me ask you a question I believe that the truth is relevant to every single person do you I believe that the truth bears relevance to your life and my life right now all right I believe that the deepest deepest truths of Christianity have significant relevance to my day-to-day life and if you don't if you do believe that why don't you just help people figure out what that is beforehand like why make them guess about what the relevance is when you speak about the Trinity why make them guess what that relevance is why not present to them that a lot of us our relationships are broken because we don't have a proper understanding of the Trinity our families are broken because understand that were made in the image of God God is Trinity and if we don't understand what that means then a relationship why not tell people why keep it a mystery that to me is what the introduction is for okay so there in my message here for today okay then I'll open it up for questions if anyone's got the way you preach sermon is number one you invest your time into it you realize that it is incarnation number two is that you have a system all right in the system begins with your main message has to be crystal clear - - for supporting principles and then expanding on each one state the principle explain the principle apply it illustrate it and then lastly put together the two the bookends the conclusion and the introduction then you of course put that in prayer before God I didn't talk about prayer not because it's not important but simply because it wasn't really my topic here today but those are my thoughts and how I prepare my sermons anyone has any questions you'd like to ask please feel free and if you do not have any questions then you can do something great by giving some hearts down there okay when you give some hearts down there in the bottom corner that's how you show your appreciation for what it is that I spoke about so thank you so much I appreciate that when do you find time every day to read the Bible as well as other educational religious material so me this is my job okay so a lot of you are trying to do this in your kind of volunteer time well first of all let me say this reading the Bible has nothing to be preaching the sermon reading the Bible something all of us okay aside from what I preach I don't read to preach or to prepare okay we all fall into that at times but that's not good I need to read like I'm not preparing a sermon for this Sunday okay someone else is preaching but I read my Bible this morning because I need the Word of God but I think what you were saying is when you find time to read for preparation again this is my job okay so I I put a lot of time into this okay and a lot of times I'm always trying to read different books different genres of books and sometimes I'll read a book today and it'll pay dividends in a sermon series I'm preaching a year from now okay so I feel like it's more of like a habit of reading than it is like how do you find the time for okay I just met in general not Germans okay yeah you make it a priority that's how you doing that's how you doing how would you encourage somebody to become a priest or a preacher if they have the gift how would I encourage them I would encourage them to I wouldn't necessarily encourage them to become a preacher or priest and he would becoming nervous I'll get to that question I would encourage them to serve God and whatever capacity they're in and not worry about the title or the duty but like if God has given me this much time to serve Him I'm gonna serve him to the fullest of this okay and as that expands because he was faithful what is least made ruler over much so I wouldn't worry about priest or preacher I'm just be faithful what I have someone says about how do you like not be nervous if you have the answer that I would love to know okay because I still get nervous to this day every time I go up there on stage and people don't believe me and is he look so natural and I would say yes that's called acting okay and I'm very good at it okay I've been practicing for so many years and you can't avoid being nervous but what you can do is you can minimize it by being prepared so the more prepared I am the less nervous but I don't think there's a solution to not be if you're not nervous then you don't feel the wave of what it is that you're doing up here and yeah I still get nervous so there's no magic pills someone said am i coming to Egypt no I'm not coming to Egypt but where I am going is to lunch okay because it is now one o'clock so it's for a time for me to have some lunch thank you all so much for tuning in I will see you all next week and like I said at the beginning for those who weren't here every gonna start off by answering one or two questions so you can submit questions to me via Twitter or via my blog post for that day every week I post a blog post on Wednesdays then I scope about it later that afternoon so you can post a question there and I'll start every session by hopefully answering one or two of your questions okay thank y'all very much have a great rest of the day and I'll see you all next week

Channel: Fr. Anthony Messeh

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Length: 30min 42sec (1842 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 12 2017