Don Sunukjian: How I Preach

March 17th, 2014| Topic: aBeLOG, How I Preach | 24

Don Sunukjian: And this is How I Preach …

[I’m happy to present Don Sunukjian on How I Preach. He has been in ministry for close to four decades now and has left an indelible mark on evangelical homiletics, including that taught at Dallas Seminary, where he was a prof in the 80s.]

Donald R. Sunukjian
Professor of Preaching
Chair, Department of Christian Ministry and Leadership
Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, California

Current gig (preaching, teaching, etc.) and years at it:
Teaching preaching at Talbot for 18 years.
Just finished an 8-year pastoral stint at Armenian Christian Fellowship of Orange County, Costa Mesa, California.

Most used English Bible version:
New International Version.

Use of Greek and Hebrew (light/moderate/heavy):
Heavy Greek, moderate Hebrew.

Current computer(s)/device(s):
I’m still a “paper guy.” But I love my MacBook Pro!

Who or what made you want to preach?
The off-hand remark of a Sunday School teacher in an 11th grade class that “some of you ought to consider full-time ministry,” followed by a “call” while counseling at a summer camp before my senior year in high school, set the course of my life. Dr. J. Vernon McGee, of the Church of the Open Door, modeled what an impactful ministry for God could look like.

One word that best describes how you prepare to preach:
Thoroughly.

One word that best describes how you preach:
Several words vie for mention. I hope my preaching is perceived as “engaging/interesting,” “relevant,” “clear,” “deeply-felt,” and “thoroughly biblical.”

Who are you most indebted to for making you the preacher you are (besides God)?
Haddon Robinson. I took every class he offered at Dallas Seminary, plus some independent studies. He shaped the initial focus and approach of my preaching.

What tools/aids for sermon prep can’t you live without?
The most recent exegetical commentaries. Lexicons. Interlinears. Parsing guides.
I subscribe to New Testament Abstracts and Old Testament Abstracts and mark significant articles that I look up later if I need to, during sermon preparation.

Illustrations: Where do you go for them and how do you store them?
I’m not real big on illustrations that are outside the living experiences of my listeners. While these may be interesting, they first of all seldom add anything to the understanding of the biblical concept, and more importantly, they don’t help the listeners see how the concept actually shows up in their lives. I prefer to use scenarios from their daily experiences. These have the advantage of concrete and contemporary relevance.

Average numbers of prep hours per sermon?
15–20 hours.

What’s your best time-saving trick?
I don’t know many shortcuts to good preaching. Obviously, doing a book series allows early study of background and overall argument/flow to suffice for several sermons in the whole series.

What time of the day are you most effective?
I’m a morning, pre-dawn, person. I get less productive around 4:00 pm, and seldom attempt any serious work after supper.

Tell us your sermon-prep routine:
First stage: original language text plus an interlinear and parsing guide—making notes on white paper.
Second stage: stack of commentaries and journal articles—reading and entering notes on the computer.
Third stage: blank white paper—developing the outline and flow of the message.
Final stage: computer—manuscripting.

Any props used regularly in sermons? PowerPoint? Handout?
PowerPoint for maps, chiasms, or other unfamiliar literary structures, and to quickly access verses not part of my primary passage. Any props that help visualize the message are fine with me. No handouts. These tend to preoccupy people rather than joining their heart with my heart around the passage. My goal in preaching is not for the listener to remember an outline (which I forget myself in a few days), but rather to engage with the Take-Home-Truth as it connects with their lives.

Who critiques your sermon, besides yourself?
In my early days my wife often made helpful suggestions.

How has your preaching improved over time?
My understanding of the skills of oral clarity grew after I’d been teaching at Dallas Seminary for a few years, listening to 15–20 sermons a week! You begin to notice some glaring deficiencies. Once I was able to pin those down, they obviously became a fixture in my own preaching.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?
Packing a car for a vacation trip. Squeegee-ing a car window.

What do you listen to while you work?
Nothing externally. Hopefully the Spirit internally.

Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?
An introvert. One-on-one conversations are satisfying, but I’m drained by social group-schmoozing.

What are you currently reading?
I’m reading whatever commentaries are contributing to my preaching. I try to keep up on all the homiletical books coming out. Occasionally a non-preaching religious book will capture my attention. On vacation, I go through several “beach reads.”

What’s your sleep routine like?
Being an early-morning person, I never know what’s on television after 10:00 pm.

What do you wish you had learned when you were in seminary?
I’m grateful for the great preparation I got at Dallas Seminary. Obviously no education can provide the wisdom and experience that can be gained only through years of ministry.

Exercise routine?
For decades I played racquetball at least twice a week. Now I walk 2–3 miles most every day.

Spiritual disciplines?
An occasional fast.

Favorite food?
I’m ethnically Armenian—‘nuff said.
But I guess I haven’t met a cuisine that I didn’t like.

What you do when you aren’t involved in preaching-related activities?
I have 5 married children and 16 grandchildren—the birthday celebrations alone fill in my social calendar, to say nothing of holiday gatherings.
I take one complete day off every week. My wife and I often go to Disneyland (we have season passes) or to the beach to walk on the pier and have lunch. (I know, I know, it’s a rough life, but somebody’s gotta do it.)

Fill in the blank: I’d love to see _____ answer these same questions.
Abe Kuruvilla. 🙂
[Editor’s note: Alright, alright, one of these days ….]

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
In my senior year in high school, I encountered Dr. McGee in a hallway at the Church of the Open Door. I asked him, “Dr. McGee, what advice would you give a young man who was going into the ministry?” His abrupt answer: “Develop a thick skin, brother!” As the decades unfolded, I learnt that was good advice.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Who could ask for a better life than to be absorbed with God’s Word—studying it, presenting it, and hopefully living by it!

[For the archives of this series, How I Preach, see here.]