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Resources for the Saturday night special — Exegesis and Study

2 Oct

Back in seminary, I made a pledge to myself.

“Self,” I said with great pomposity, “I know that you will never be like one of those preachers who are up late on Saturday nights writing their sermons. You will take time to get the sermon written early in the week, won’t you?”

After all, I had been around preachers for a while by the time I entered seminary. In fact, I was married to one, and I used to look down my nose with disdain on those Saturday nights when she was pulling her hair out in order to get something on paper (it’s a wonder that she’s not bald). “I will never do that,” I told myself. “I’m much more organized.”

Ha!

Now, almost ten years into my ministry as a pastor, and after five years of preaching every Sunday for fifty weeks out of the year, I find myself again and again sitting down at the computer around 9 p.m. on Saturday night to finally get something on paper. So much for pomposity.

In my defense, I should note that it’s not like I am picking a topic on Saturday night. I do know what I’m preaching on, and have done some general work identifying themes in the text (I try to plan ahead quarterly). During the week I will be thinking about the text, and will be consciously looking for ways to bring the text alive. And, I usually review resources on the text, doing some basic research. So, when I sit down on Saturday, I usually have something to bring to the table . . . but there’s still a ways to go.

However, the task is made much easier with several online resources that have become absolutely necessary in my preparation process. These are resources that I use during the week, but that become especially crucial on Saturday nights when God is leading me to new thoughts and directions.

The best source for exegetical work and gaining insights about the biblical text is “The Text This Week” (www.textweek.com). This site is a gem of a resource run by Jenee Woodard, a graduate of the St. Paul School of Theology, and a self proclaimed “amateur” biblical scholar. Oh would we all be so lucky to have such amateurs in our churches! Jenee takes each week’s lectionary texts ans scours the internet for resources specifically directed on those texts, indexing and categorizing those articles. While this is a great resource for the lectionary preacher, she has been doing this long enough that one can search by biblical text and find great resources even when you aren’t preaching the lectionary. What I appreciate is her willingness to draw on historical materials, contemporary exegesis, and the sermons of others. She also includes links to children’s sermon resources, artistic interpretations of the text, and all sorts of other things that are infinitely helpful. In fact, there is so much stuff most weeks that it is impossible to review it all, but with a little practice, you will find that you have a clear idea of what to look at first.

One of the things that Jenee has added are links to the ATLAS Database, which is a database of academic articles administered by American Theological Library Database. Access to ATLAS requires a subscription which isn’t cheap ($99 per year), however many seminaries and theological schools provide access to ATLAS for their alumni (mine does) and access to these resources offers additional depth in your studies.

Another resource I find myself using more and more are the online bibles which allow searching and offer multiple translations. I tend to use “Bible Gateway” (http://www.biblegateway.com/) the most, as I generally lean toward the NIV and The Message translations in forming my preaching. Bible Gateway would be a complete resource if it included the NRSV, but it is a more “evangelical” based site (whatever that means these days) and it has not added the NRSV to its resources. There is an online NRSV at “oremus Bible Browser” (http://bible.oremus.org/) but I frankly don’t use it very much. Very often, I will open up multiple tabs in Firefox (my browser of choice) with the different translations so that they are always available in my writing process.

There are other resources that I use along the way, including the ever present Google search, but these two resources are the primary sources for study and research on the biblical text. Next time we will look at resources for illustrations and examples.

 

Welcome to the TechnoPastor

2 Oct

The last thing I need to do is to start another blog.

After all, I have a personal blog that I ignore regularly, and run a site that aggregates others writings.

And yet, I’ve realized that I have some things to share that don’t easily fit into those other spaces.

You see, I’ve spent the past thirty-five years or so pretty much enamored with technology. “Enamored” is probably too strong a word, for while I am a boy who likes his toys, I’ve also been around technology enough to recognize the limitations present in this stuff.

For a significant part of my life, technology was connected to my career. I was a professional geek, paid to massage circuits and twiddle knobs and spending far too much time in dark rooms with lots of air conditioning (even now, I tend to keep the thermostat at the level of a meat locker). Then, in a strange twist that could only come from God, I was led to a new place, following a call into pastoral ministry. Today, I am quickly reaching the day when I will have been a pastor as long as I was a technician, and I ponder the significance of that event in my life.

What that ultimately means is that I am a pastor who isn’t afraid of technology. In fact, I like to search for technological tools that help me in my ministry. Some of those are the traditional uses of technology, such as membership database applications (most of which are cumbersome and only marginally useful). Others are more on the cutting edge — Web 2.0, social networking, and all the other buzz words we hear today. The point is that I am willing to try things out and think about how technology is changing the way we engage in the practice of ministry.

Do you doubt that is happening? Well ask most any pastor today to try and write a sermon without the use of the web. There used to be a time when the pastor’s large library in the pastor’s study was mandatory, for one simply needed those print resources to research and better understand scripture. These days, most any pastor can sit in Panera, drinking a cup of coffee, and access those same resources — and many, many more. Sermon writing can be done in a completely different way through access to these resources.

Of course, there is a down side to that as well. Far too many folks succumb to the temptation to cut and paste their way into profound thoughts, using on-line sermon services which provide canned sermons for almost every scripture text. The lazy among us (and trust me, I’ve been tempted at times) can easily download a sermon and preach it as their own without anyone in their congregation knowing that they have just heard a canned speech.

What I have realized is that it is important to have a place to talk about these things, and I hope that I have some background and experience that might be helpful to you in thinking about your own use of technology.

So, hang with me and lets see where this goes. I hope that we can have some fun together, and think critically about the relationship between technology and the church.

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