When preparing a sermon (Preaching), it is advisable not to adopt a unilinear, deductive, text-to-sermon approach but to engage the factors text/topic, preacher, and congregation/situation interactively in terms of form and content. In most cases, this produces a rhetorically or didactically justified sequence of three steps, which simultaneously constitutes a process of spiritual experience.
¶ 1. Perception: In a first step, it is necessary to gather and methodically examine as many different observations, associations, and insights a…