Stott on sermon preparation

Stott's method for sermon preparation:

1. Choose your text. How? Liturgical (based on church season, lectionary), external factors (e.g. significant public event), pastoral reasons, and/or personal factors.
2. Meditate on it. Subconscious incubation, maturation, percolation. What does it mean? What does it say today?
3. Isolate the dominate thought. Find the main theme, concentrate on one theme (differentiates sermon from lecture).
4. Arrange your material to serve the dominant thought. Knock the material into shape so as to best serve the dominant thought. Many different ways of structuring a sermon: exposition, argument, faceting, categorizing, and analogy. Or ladder sermon ("takes one from point to point like the rungs of a ladder"), jewel sermon ("consists of turning one idea around as one might turn a jewel in his fingers allowing different facets to catch the light"), sky rocket sermon ("begins on the ground, rises to a height, the breaks into pieces and comes down to earth again").
5. Add the introduction and conclusion. Start with the body, then add intro and conclusion. A good introduction: arouses interest, and introduces the hearers to the theme. Conclusions are more difficult than introductions, more than mere recapitulation (stimulating people's memory, 'dinning it into their heads continually' (Luther)); it also involves personal application.
6. Write down and pray over your message. No fixed rule for writing out (each to their own), but a general consensus to do so.

(John Stott, Between Two Worlds, Eerdmans, 1982, pp 211-258)