The purpose of this exercise is to develop skill at tracing theological concepts in the text to corresponding points of contact in human experience.
| · Make sure sermon ideas are clear and well worded.
· Think beyond church-world to real-world experience. · Remember the nature of human nature. |
· Allow your own humanity to come through.
· Address assumptions, symptoms and consequences. · Express compassion and understanding for hearers. |
| The human element is the human condition that corresponds to the truths that are presented in your text. The factors of human experience may be described plainly in the text or only implied. | |
| 1. Identify the factors of human experience mentioned directly in the text as they pertained to the original textual setting.
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| 2. Identify the human issues suggested in the text by implication as the writer addresses problems of his day.
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| 3. Summarize the concepts from your text that will become the main ideas of the sermon.
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| 4. Use the following categories to begin describing the likely experience of the person who needs to hear the message of the text as a remedy for his needs:
(1) His symptoms of the trouble he is experiencing:
(2) His underlying assumptions about the issue:
(3) Some consequences in his experience:
(4) How a person feels who is suffering at this point:
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| 5. Write a profile of the person needing your message in vivid, concrete terms as you sympathetically identify with his suffering and interest him in the good news you have for him. |