Frank DeLalla

I'm getting ready for Sunday's message. If I set up the time stamps right for this site (which I doubt) you'll see that its Saturday evening! In other words, I don't have a ton of time left for reflection. Not and ideal situation for my prayer week message, but it happens. Now, this time I have an excuse I was on vacation until Friday (worst vacation ever, but that's another story--all 4 DeLalla's got sick).  

I translated my text earlier this afternoon, but I just felt like I wasn't grasping the core message of the text, so I started to fiddle around with the diagraming tool in my Accordance Bible software. (This is Mac only, but I believe Logos has a tool for this too). Here is a picture of what my diagram looks like:

Now don't think I'm smart. The color coding was already there. I simply laid the text out logically, not in some secret scholarly way. I was literally absent the day they taught that in seminary-really! I could never figure out all the stuff about where to put the prepositions and whatnot. I just move stuff around in a way that helps me think more clearly about what is being said.

For example, in the text I'm working with Paul says he, "did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom." In the next verse He tells them why. He decided to focus on Christ and his cross. In my diagram I lined those things up to show the contrast between what he didn't do, what he did do, and why he did it. Simple, intuitive, and easy to remember when I'm yelling about it tomorrow morning.

Don't think you need Greek to do this. Working through a text this way with a solid, literal translation is extremely helpful.

Don't think you need the software I used! I used to do this in Word all the time. Some people just write it out, but that doesn't work for me. Accordance makes it extremely easy, and fast, but Word, pen and paper will yield the same results.

There are some big benefits to diagraming a text. I couldn't help but stop for a minute to commend this to you because within a half hour or so I had the core of my message laid out! And I didn't really write anything save a couple of key phrases to track what I discovered. Why so few notes? Because the message of the passage is so clear to me, it doesn't seem necessary at this point. I'm not done yet, but when I go to make my oultine I have a much clearer idea of where the message needs to go, what words and ideas I need more study on etc.

Dr. Duane Garrett once remarked that if you don't have much time to prepare for a message, the best thing you can do is spend your time in the text itself and let if flow from there. This is a great way to spend some quality time with a text. Preaching is not about cute illustrations and alliterated points! It is about God building a fire in you so you can burn in the pulpit on Sunday morning. Being full of the text itself makes for a more glorious fire than some warmed over antidotes, cute outlines, or clever quotes. Nothing against them, but you know what I mean. ;-

Mark Driscoll explains how he prepares to preach. He asks himself 4 questions:

1. What does it say? - he talks about studying in the original languages, praying and meditating on the text.


2. What does it mean? - now that he knows what it says, what does that practically mean?


3. How or why do we resist it? - Since we suppress the truth (Rom. 1) we need to anticipate people's objections and dismissals of the truth we preach. This is where I think he starts to say some stuff that most preachers really need to hear!


4. How does this apply to our mission? - going beyond personal application to family application, and church application!

Here it from the Mark in a short video here.