The spice in my sermons . . .

Two nights ago my son, Jonah, and I watched the Disney animated flick Ratatouille. Fun movie! I love the part where the little rodent runs around the kitchen tossing in a bit spice here, a clove of garlic there. He cooks up a sopa de dia to die for.

My sermon preparation often resembles that. I teach aspiring preachers a method of sermon preparation that I call the "Eureka Method." I pile all the language tools and commentaries on my desk. I open my Word Search program to several different translations. I've got dictionaries and encyclopedias piled around my desk. And then I dive into it all. After a while, an outline begins to emerge from the haze. Then, at some point, (I never know when that will be. Sometimes it happens quickly; other times it is painfully slow) I have this "aha" moment where I sit up and say "that's what it is!" That is my Eureka moment.

From that point on, the sermon writing takes on a life of its own.

Often times the cherry on top of that ice cream sundae is a video clip from SermonSpice.com.

A few weeks back, for instance, I was preaching on the relationship between husbands and wives. I showed a clip to make the point that women need leadership and comfort from their husbands. It had a powerful impact. More recently, I used a clip titled "Alone in a Crowd" to demonstrate that, in spite of us having many acquaintances, too few of us have really deep friendships.

While considerably more expensive than, say, BluefishTV.com, SermonSpice has nevertheless become an important "club" in my homiletics golf bag.