452. Study Month
As I wrote in an earlier blog, starting this year, I plan to have at least one study month a year. I will be present at church and lead NFC and GPS, but I won’t be preaching in February (Pastor Anthony will preach), so I can focus on studying and researching a topic or working on big projects.
As a lead pastor, I wear many hats. But my primary duty is “preaching”, which is to communicate God’s words to my congregation on a regular basis. Thankfully, I love preaching, and I cherish it as a wonderful privilege. To do it well, I usually read 3-4 commentaries on the selected passage and distill key details in my sermon study notes so I can quickly reference them as I prepare a message. Then, throughout the week, I let it simmer in my head until I fully write it out for Sunday. As the weekend approaches, my mind is usually fully occupied with sermon preparation. Because of it, my mind doesn’t have enough bandwidth for focused reading or research, on top of the regular readings and studies I do. That’s why the study month is necessary.
Unlike a sabbatical, which is meant for full rest, this is meant for focused work, an extension of my current work. Other pastors often take a study month (or months) to write a book, but for me, it is to create a “course”: a parenting course. God had been putting on my heart to create a Life Bible study series for “parents. I did teach a version of it to KSC parents years ago. I received the teaching material from a youth pastor in NLF created by a Korean pastor. The parents who took it said it was helpful, but I personally felt the material was lacking and its style was too Korean. Also, I was an inexperienced parent then.
But now that I have some years of parenting under my belt and am applying some gospel-centred principles and boundaries in my own parenting, I have become convinced that they could be helpful to other parents. I taught bits and pieces of the principles to our youth parents in the annual Parents Conference and received good feedback. I doubt I will be able to finish the course, but my goal is to create a framework and overall key outlines after some focused readings. I won’t be recording TOTW (thought of the week) or writing the pastor blog during the study month to focus on the study.
