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This Month: "The Use of Incubators"
By Howard Vanderwell, Calvin Theological Seminary and Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Early in my ministry two distinct emotions gently nudged me in the direction of developing a more effective method of sermon planning. The first was the fear of finishing a sermon only shortly before its deadline and living with the nagging feeling that I had missed things but no longer had time to pursue them any further. "There must be other good material I should have consulted," I thought, "good illustrations I could have found, nuances of the text that I should have thought of. But I just haven’t got the time!" The other was the regret that made me realize those fears were well founded. On Sunday night and all day Monday I easily thought of places where an illustration was needed, where more study should have been applied, and where loopholes in my line of thought were all too apparent. "I could have made it a much better sermon if only I had had more time to work on it!"
I knew I couldn’t lengthen the week, but I could improve my method. So I resolved that each sermon and each series of sermons needed a lengthy period of time to incubate until it was developed enough to be born. No more pressing up against deadlines!
I developed a series of folders to always be visible on my desk. I called them "Hoppers" and labeled them as such. They were green folders (green for growth!). One was a "hopper" for sermon series ideas. Another for Catechism sermons. And still another for general sermon ideas. As a series was scheduled, a hopper was set up for that specific series. These hoppers constantly collected jottings, notes, a copied page, an illustration, a text reference, etc., and they served as incubators for this information to grow and develop. By the time a series was to be planned, or a sermon to be written, I had the advantage of weeks (and months) of reflection and collections.
Anyone who stepped into my study knew that I lived with "hoppers" that served as incubators for sermon ideas!