Before we get into too involved in what will be said and done week-to-week, we delve deeply into scripture, culture, and academia to discover the key concepts associated with our chosen topic.
This means a vast amount of research that provides a series overview. It’s a conservative estimate that we put approximately one hour of study into every minute spoken in church. So a four-week series, with four 30-minute messages, conservatively involves 120 hours of research. We do social, linguistic (looking at Greek and Hebrew), historical, and theological research. We also spend time connecting threads in the big ideas—looking for something new and personal to contribute to the topic—and wordsmithing and wordcrafting—taking top-shelf ideas and moving them down to a more accessible shelf.
Step three, then, is data-mining to ensure we speak credibly and authoritatively on our chosen subject.