Online Resources

[Howard Chapman]

I have four main websites I go to when I am working on sermon and worship prep. You all may be familiar with them, but if not I'll post them here.

I'm afraid only one is free, and that is: www.textweek.com. This is a lectionary based site that links you to other websites that have something on particular Bible texts. If you don't use the lectionary, you can just go to scripture references, and then link to an appropriate page. However it only has lectionary passages, so if you want to preach on something that is not included in the lectionary, you are out of luck.

My favorite is Homiletics magazine with their website: www.homileticsonline.com. This is a subscription, I think it is about $65 a year. I have been subscribing for about 9 or 10 years now. It is lectionary based and has a great website with sermons, commentary, worship and hymn suggestions, illustrations, plus a PowerPoint presentation for the sermon. I go to this website often.

Another lectionary based website that I recently subscribed to is: www.goodpreacher.com. I can't remember how much... I think around $60 or $70. It's not bad. More scholarly than Homiletics, with deeper commentary. A nice section on linking the text with movies and art. Also a review of other sermons on the text.

Finally, since I do a PowerPoint for almost every sermon, I recently subscribed to: www.powerpointsermons.com. It is rather expensive, around $130. But it has hundreds of PowerPoint template's to choose from along with a good search engine. It does line them up according to the lectionary. But, like last Sunday with the rich man and Lazarus, I just typed in"homeless" and had three or four decent template's to choose from, with "street people" on them. They weren't connected with the parable, but I used one for the sermon. They also have sample sermons, but they are kind of fundy for my taste, so I don't usually pay much attention to them. To me the subscription price is worth it for the PowerPoint resource.

Those are four sites I use. Anyone else have one they would recommend?

Howard

[Jim Bonewald]

I definitely use textweek and homiletics online. I see that www.goodpreacher.com is essentially "lectionary homiletics." I've not subscribed to that on-line but I have been getting that in journal form. One of my frustrations is that they don't have a good index and often the particular text they choose to highlight in the journal for the week is not the one I want to preach on!

Even though I've gotten away from sticking with the lectionary and have started doing sermon series, I still go to homiletics online and do a scripture search to see if my particular text is covered, they have a decent bank that goes back to the late 90s. Sometimes I find their illustrations very helpful and sometimes I just go "huh?" when I try to figure out the connection between them and the text. Other times I find what I read to be a very helpful entree into preparing a sermon even if I decide not to use the illustrations provided.

The only other on-line resource I've used in the past has been www.desperatepreacher.com They will generally have a brief preaching path for each of the lectionary texts for a particular sunday. I have liked the fact that there is a discussion forum that readers can contribute to for each text and can get some ideas from that. That part of the website is free while the rest is about a $50 subscription fee.

I like developing sermon series as I seem to get more energy for my preaching by doing them, but I sometimes find that a lot of the online non-lectionary sermon resources are too fundy for me as well.

Do you ever use videos in your sermons? If so, what resources have you found? I'm having a hard time justifying $15-$20 a pop for a video for one sermon which is what a lot of the sermon video creators charge. As for free, I keep my eye out on youtube and occasionally will find something that fits. I'd use more if I thought they were both worth it and actually contributed to the sermon.

[Howard Chapman]

Yes, I would agree that goodpreacher does not have a good index.

As far as videos, are you talking about ones you can download from the internet? I can't think of a website now, but usually they are 3 to 5 minutes long, kind of a visual parable thing. I haven't used them too much, precisely because of the cost you mention. Plus, at times they are difficult to see and hear up on the screen in the sanctuary. They look great on your computer and then are all washed out when projected in daylight. Also, it takes a lot of time to find one that really fits with what you want to say. Unless you have the video first, and then build your worship/sermon around it. But that's eisegesis (sp?) isn't it?

I have used clips from movies now and then. But I find myself spending so much time setting up the scene that I might as well just tell the story myself. So that is what I often do with still shots from the movie in my PowerPoint. And there are the same problems with projection and sound.
Howard