The ultimate challenge of preaching is to take the materials that have been gathered in the exegetical process and transform them into a sermon designed to offer some spiritual nurture for a specific congregation. Of course, that congregation lives in a world that is at least two thousand years removed from the setting of the biblical text. How to make that transition from then to now, and from the study of an ancient text to addressing its truths about the lives of a modern congregation, is our focus here.

The Skill Phase and the Creative Phase in Preparing to Preach

At this point, the words of Joseph Stowell in his interview in Biblical Sermons come to mind. Stowell breaks the work of the preacher into two parts or processes, the "skill phase" and the "creative phase."1 The skill phase is like a person who goes to the grocery store and buys all of the necessary ingredients for some food item. The creative phase occurs when those ingredients are carefully and intentionally mixed together to create the desired food item.

Stowell says, "My weakest sermons have been ones I preached when I finished the skill phase and did not take time to let it germinate and, as John Stott says, take it into the world of real people."2 Thus, the creative phase not only involves moving from text analysis to sermon design, but doing so with a specific mean and an intended audience in mind. This is where the rich and broad variety of themes and topics so often heard in today's preaching are rooted. Each preacher brings a variety of talents, perspectives, and intentions to the task of preparing a sermon.

It is possible that two preachers could set out to do the skill phase with the same text, and by the end of step seven they could wind up with much the same information. All they have done up to that point is go shopping, checklist in hand, for the needed ingredients. It is virtually impossible that those same two preachers would create the same sermon from those common ingredients. It is at the level of the "creative phase," sermon design, sermon designation, and sermon delivery that the miracle and majesty of preaching may emerge.

I heard the Scottish preacher Peter Marshall preach about the Exodus story on a record entitled "Encounter in Egypt." I have heard my own seminary advisor, James Cone, comment, lecture, and preach on that same story innumerable times. Both men were experts in doing the skill phase. However, when I heard the finished product, the two sermons had almost nothing in common except the use of the same text. The creative phase of preaching took them in different directions.

As part of my teaching at Ashland Seminary, I begin by establishing the 8 Ls methodology for doing biblical exegesis. That is my approach to the "skill phase." However, the eighth step, Life Application, involves the use of a model for engaging in the creative phase of preaching. This model involves eight words:

1. Exegetical

2. Evangelical

3. Environmental

4. Emotional