Guide to Sermon Preparation
Collect back issues of the Sword of the Lord
Why study when you have the Sword of the Lord. The best sermons ever preached are in the paper. The key is to use issues that are at least two years old so that your congregation won’t catch on. Hacker’s can borrow brains and sermons so that they can spend their time in a more profitable manner, like practicing their delivery.
Have someone read the back issues to you
This tip is for the Hacker who can’t read. Just have someone read the sermons. As you are listening imagine places that you can insert the your Hacker’s trademarks.
Become a subscriber to Hyles tape club
You don’t have to use Hyles, any sermon tape club will do. Hyles’ sermons take less effort to translate into "hacker-ese" than some others do. That’s why I suggest using his tapes. Listen to the tapes everywhere you go, soon you will have the sermons memorized. Then all you will need to do is add your own personal hacker techniques.
Memorize Swaggert’s tearful illustrations
As stated earlier, illustrations and stories should comprise the bulk of your material. A helpful idea is to put an onion in the pulpit. This helps mist the eyes for those tearjerker stories. If the onion isn’t feasible, then install a bright light overhead. Then when you need a tear or two, look up to heaven and stare at the light. This will cause your eyes to moisten. Finding an excuse to look upward shouldn’t be too difficult. Hopefully you will be at a location in your sermon that lends itself to this all-important gesture.
Be sure to begin early in your preparation. Friday not is not too early for a hacker.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Every sermon should have at least 2 hours of preparation. Any less and you will not have time to figure out the best places to insert your minimum of 15 "A-haaa’s." Two hours is usually sufficient. Be careful to not over prepare and quench the Spirit’s ability to lead you.
Remember that studies show that 65% of your congregation are "feelers," so be sure to speak to the heart, not the head. Keep as much logic out of the content as possible.
Many non-hackers are finally catching onto to this great truth. Don’t let them pass you up. Logic and coherence is nowhere near as important as evoking the right emotions. Remember, push the emotional buttons, not the intellectual ones. We live in a feel-good society, not a be-good society.
Without sounding too politically incorrect, women outnumber the men in most of our congregations and it’s the women who are usually the spiritual leaders. Every good hacker knows women make decisions based on feeling. If you are going to reach them, then speak to the heart.
Begin each sermon with "This is the most important..." or "This is the greatest..."
This is the number one phrase in the "Hacker’s" repertoire. To the well-tuned hacker, whatever he is speaking on at that moment is the greatest and most important subject. Therefore, it is not stretching the truth to use this phrase with every point or sermon.
It is better to find something that preaches than to be sure it is Scripturally correct
A story, illustration, etc. that lends itself to preaching is much better than a text from Scripture that does not lend itself to preaching. It is better to preach a good sermon from an illustration, getting supporting facts from Scripture, than it is to preach a bad sermon from a Scripture text and support it with illustrations.
Something that preaches well, as long as the idea or thought is biblical, does not have to be contextually correct.
This may be difficult to explain so let me illustrate with one of the finest examples of this truth. I once heard a wonderful hacker preach a sermon on soul-winning. His text referred to the fish gate mentioned in Nehemiah. The fish gate, as we all know, is symbolic of fishing for men, i.e. soul-winning. For a hacker, it is all right to use the fish gate in the OT to preach a sermon on soul-winning. Soul-winning is a biblical theme that is right and proper so any text that can launch you into that subject is a hacker’s dream even if the text actually has nothing to do with the subject. The words don’t matter as long as the theme is one of the acceptable hacker themes.
Be sure every sermon has at least a fleeting reference to hell, damnation, and judgment.
Every hacker’s favorite subject to preach on is hell and damnation. You will get more amens when preaching on this subject than any other, especially at hacker gatherings (except for maybe preaching on pants on women).