Sermon Scraps
For a long time, the end of my sermon process included deleting all my study notes. Clippings collected through careful study were carelessly discarded.
I threw away tons of useful material! Even though it wasn’t right for the message at hand, it still had value. Why not keep my sermon scraps?
Almost any project has material that don’t make it into the final product:
- Laying flooring inevitably has cutoffs
- Editing an article has sentences that don’t quite fit
- Sermon preparation is a process of gleaning and trimming
In each case, there are useful scraps that can be applied to future projects. As I finish this article, I just removed a good reference that didn’t quite work!
Sermon scraps have at least two benefits:
Scraps help load context when returning to an old message. An outline is a form of cognitive compression. Hours of study get squeezed into an outline and thirty minutes of speaking. Refreshing an old message is easier when you can walk through the context that produced the outline.
Scraps add to the stockpile of ideas and phrases that will prove useful in future messages. If you preach in series, this is especially true. A quote, illustration, or idea might not fit this week’s message, but it just might help with the next!
Initially, I resisted keeping my sermon scraps not knowing where to put them. Scrap wood quickly turns into an unwieldy mess. Don’t check my garage!
While listening to a podcast, I heard about a writer who keeps one big document containing good sentences that didn’t make it into finished pieces. This is a good idea, but for my study scraps, I keep them with the message.
Designating this place helps me mentally, setting my mind at ease that I’m not losing useful material as I trim the message. Practically, it takes up next to no additional storage space.
Admittedly, this does makes for a more cluttered document. But it’s a tame sort of clutter and a small price to pay for keeping useful material accessible.
In each message, I add two main headings after the outline:
- Study - All study notes stay at the bottom of the message document. This includes subheadings for word definitions, feedback, observations, commentary clippings, quotes, and illustrations.
- Cutting Room Floor - anything I trim out of the sermon outline goes here. This isn’t as much raw material (like study) as it is the best bits that had to be trimmed due to time constraints. The term “cutting room floor” is a reference to film editing when editors would literally cut film to edit a movie.
Now, the end of my sermon process looks like trimming down the message and printing only the pages that contain the outline. My sermon scraps are tucked away under their headings, ready to go when their time comes.