A year ago it was 9/11, and along the way a long wave of the kidnapping and killing of little children. It's a 50% divorce rate in this county and still climbing. All these things for me, as a pastor with a prophetic voice in ministry, motivate my sermon preparation. I have people who help me gather research and I depend heavily on my computer at home and here on the road. Then I have several people who are searching out, capsuling into paragraphs information that I am able to build into my messages and to books so that when I am speaking we are talking about today — not a month ago — and using scripture to apply that.

There are people who don't like that. There are some people who want to sit under pure, simple, unapplied Bible teaching. Dr. J. Vernon McGee all of his life, and even on radio since his death, is that type of a teacher-preacher. Much needed, excellent, but his preaching is just as effective now on the air as it was back when he was living because he did not apply what he was teaching to what is happening in current events. There is a need for that and the people who want that would not be happy under my ministry. And there are others who get too much into the political and too much into the social and too little edifying people in Christ. I try very hard to keep the balance, where a family leaves church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night spiritually fed, their needs met, and also alert and aware of the world they are living in.

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Preaching: With the kind of hectic schedule that you must keep, how do you go about the process of preparing for Sunday morning? Could you walk me through what a preparation process for you might be?

Falwell: Early morning by 6:00 am I shower, dress, and study. By 8:00 am I am out heading to the hospital, to the office, to my work. Mid-afternoon I am crawling in the back of our own plane where I will be going somewhere — usually east of the Mississippi, north of Miami, south of Bangor — to preach that night and come back home that night. And I sleep in the plane. I have a satellite phone in there so no matter where I am in the world the office, my wife, my family can call and it rings right by my little desk there. And I have a satellite internet connection there where I can receive and send emails I am in instant communication with everybody all the time. And my seat at that desk also folds into a bed and we have a galley on board.

Some people travel with me so I get my rest and if I am short changed at night I make it up in two hours flying to wherever I am going. When I get there I will have shaved and refreshed and cleaned up and step off the plane and go to work. Then we hop in the plane and I sleep all the way home. Then I go directly home and right into bed and the next morning same thing. I've been doing that 47 years.

For me sermon preparation is happening in my study, in my private devotions, in my traveling on the plane and then when I catch a couple of hours in the office like here today both on the computer and on the pads here I am putting together for next Sunday the follow-up for the super conference.