Gary Millar on how to preach a series on a book

1. Read the book. Read it and keep reading it. Reading the text will save you from getting into trouble later on. Have a go at the big idea of the book.
2. Sit down and break up the book.
3. Work out your big idea for each passage.
4. Work out how you get each passage to Jesus (Biblical Theology).
5. How am I going to preach the gospel from this part of the Bible.
6. Set up a table with your break up of the book as rows, and your bid idea, Biblical Theology and Gospel (NT passage) laid out. Make sure you’re not doing the same Biblical Theology model two weeks in a row or you’ll bore people.

Some further bits of wisdom

• Have your Kid’s program in synch with teaching program… but this means you’ve got to sort out your big ideas in time for your Sunday School teachers.
• It’s nice to be ahead in your thinking. Do the prep thoroughly prior to the week you have to preach.
• How to test a big idea – read back over the passage and if there are a bunch of verses that aren’t covered, start again.
• Sometimes there’s a major idea and a minor idea – it’s almost always right to focus on the major idea.
• If you’re not clear in the preparation stage you’re not clear on Sundays.
• Usually if people are confused I assume that it’s my fault. Normally it’s because I’m underdone in the planning stage.