Reading & Notes Revisited

I appreciate the input from Bumble and the question from Larry in the comments section of the previous post.

Bumble has a very fine set of study templates that would be of value for any preacher to look over. Larry's question involved what pastors use to compile their notes. I tend to stick to pen and paper, photocopying sections of commentaries as needed to take with me to my daily lunch/study at the local Barnes and Noble. But I don't use any electronic tools for notetaking, despite a rather substantial investment in Logos/Libronix software.

Speaking of reading, Ligon Duncan has an excellent series of posts on pastors and reading. See the Together for the Gospel blog.

I would also recommend a book by Dale Rosenberger called Who Are You To Say: Establishing Pastoral Authority in Matters of Faith. His church background is a bit different from mine, but he has some good things to say about the importance of God's Word as the center of our pastoral authority.

Next up on my list of reading is A Call to Spiritual Reformation by D.A. Carson. What are you reading?

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My fantasy baseball league draft is looming on the horizon. If you are so inclined, and would like some good um, small room reading, I highly recommend Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster.

Reading and Notes

Today is a principal study day in my week. It is a day where I do a good deal of reading about the text I am preaching from on Sunday. I tend to do more personal reading/observation of the text on Tuesdays and intensify that for Wednesday, combining it with checking commentaries and other references.

I have a substantial collection of electronic books (Logos/Libronix), but I don't want to confine myself to electronic sources - especially while preaching from Romans. To do so would mean to miss the outstanding commentaries by Douglas Moo (NIC) and Thomas Schreiner (ECNT). These two commentaries vie for the top spot in my list of favorites.

I find myself taking notes of ideas/concepts, linking them to page numbers in the respective commentaries. Occasionally I will pull a few sentences out as a quotation, but I'm finding that doing this involves a good deal of writing. Not that there is anything wrong with that - writing is a way of learning.

But it got me thinking about how other pastors handle the results of their reading. How do you take notes? Do you mark your books or write notes on separate paper? Do you file them?

To Preachers, From Luther

"That's why it is so difficult to preach. No matter how I preach, something goes wrong. Someone always goes off on a tangent. If I don't preach about faith, the result will be useless and hypocritical works. If I only emphasize faith, no one does any good works. The result is either useless, faithless do-gooders or believers who don't do any good works. So we must preach the message to those who accept both faith and works. We must preach to those who want to remain in the vine, put their trust in Christ, and put their faith into action in their everyday lives."

From February 2 reading, Faith Alone, Zondervan