Feature: The Research Assistant
Donald L. Bubna
by Donald L. Bubna, pastor, Salem Alliance Church, Salem, Oregon
Most pastors would be intrigued by the prospect of an assistant to develop their file systems and do research on sermon materials.
If you react, "Sounds like a great idea, but our church doesn't have the money," don't stop reading yet. It's not really a money matter.
I've had such an assistant for years. She has enriched my life and found new purpose and ministry for herself. And like other church volunteers, she has never received a salary.
Verna Sturdivant and her husband, Clair, moved to our city over a decade ago to retire. A former schoolteacher, Verna was a lover of books and wanted to remain intellectually active. Her responses to my messages revealed a thinking and appreciative hearer as well as a "doer of the Word."
One day she told me about some E. Stanley Jones readings that paralleled certain points of my most recent sermon. I asked to see them and realized how much they would have enhanced that message.
"Verna," I said, "would you be willing to help me by looking for this type of material in advance?"
She accepted eagerly, and we began.
Frankly, that put me under a bit of pressure. If Verna were to help me effectively, I needed to know fairly well ahead of time what I would be preaching on. I saw I needed to grow. This new accountability would be good for me.
Soon, I was discussing with Verna very early each week ideas for the next Sunday's message, and she was supplying beautiful materials from her own library—illustrations of devotional excerpts that ideally augmented my sermons.
It became obvious that I should work even further in advance. This took a while, but now it is my common practice to prepare outlines a month in advance. These outlines often ...
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