TIP of the day: Sermon Starter Guide part 2 - theme, topics, passages, related passages

MJ. Smith

1. Yesterday we took an overview of the available topics, themes and interactives. Today we will start going through the Sermon Starter Guide section by sections. The Guide behaves differently depending upon whether you invoke it with a Bible Reference or with a Preaching Theme. The first has some similarity with a Passage Guide; the latter is more closely related to the Topic Guide.

Even in cases where the section appears in the Sermon Starter Guide when invoked by both methods, the contents of the section may differ.

2. The available Preaching Themes (list given here)  is pulled from DB.Preaching Themes.

3. Theme/Topics/Topic sections:

• Theme appears in the SSG invoked in either manner but with different details. See below for invoking via Preaching Theme. When invoked by scripture passage one obtains (a) a definition of the Preaching Theme "Creation", (b) links to Sermon Starter Guides invoked bt suggested Preaching Themes.
• Topics occurs only when invoked by passage and is identical to Topics when invoked in the Passage Guide. Note that this is NOT similar to the Topic section of the Topic Guide.

4. For the Theme section when invoked from a Preaching Theme one obtains (a) a definition of the Preaching Theme "Creation", (b) links to a variety of Factbook entries, (c) links to the same terms in the Topic Guide and (d) a search in the form shown below which includes a subset of the terms as string searches

5. A bit to my surprise, the terms selected for Factbook, Topic Guide, or Search  in no case reflect the Cultural Concept Ontology but rather reflect only the work of the Faithlife Research Team prior to the implementation of Cultural Concepts. However, the Lexham Cultural Ontology Glossary provides options for similar topics/themes and hierarchy for those concepts

The same holds for the proposed Preaching Themes:

However, taking advantage of the overlap in Preaching Themes and Cultural Concepts, one can find additional useful resources via the Factbook.

6. When invoked by Preaching Theme, the Sermon Starter Guide provides a Passages Section containing (a) Key Verses on the Preaching Theme taken from the dataset mentioned above; note this is similar to but not identical to the Key Verses in the Related Verses section of the Topic Guide. (b) a list of potential preaching pericopes (c) the option to save the list as a Passage List and (d) the option to open your highest priority Bible filtered to the pericope list.

7. When invoked by a scriptural passage, the Sermon Starter Guide provides a Parallel Passages section which draws from your library - resources with a type:"Bible Harmony". This is identical to the Parallel Passages section when invoked by the Passage Guide. Remember to nag Faithlife regarding the lack of any such resource for the Pauline Parallels.