TIP of the day: Sermon Starter Guide part 6 - Interactives, Media, Illustrations and Outlines

MJ. Smith

The remaining sections of the Sermon Starter Guide are less interesting in the sense that we do not have a query to help us understand the differences or the reason for the inclusion of specific items.

1.Where initiated by a Preaching Theme, the Interactives selected for the Sermon Starter Guide are nearly identical to those selected by a Topic Guide. However, when initiated by a scripture reference, only the Psalm Explorer shows as the passage is from a Psalm. The corresponding Passage Guide for some reason does not even select that interactive.

2. When invoked by Preaching Theme, the Media Resources section of the Sermon Starter Guide essentially matches that of the Topic Guide. Similarly when invoked by scriptural passage, the SSG and the Passage Guide selections essential match. I say "essentially" because they matched on my test case but I cannot view the underlying query to insure that they always will match.

3. The behavior of Media Collections corresponds to the behavior of Media Resources.

4. Only when invoked by scripture passage does the Sermon Starter Guide contain an illustration section. This overlaps the content of the Preaching Resources section which belongs only to the SSG invoked by Preaching Theme. Note that the list of potential illustrations is quite extensive compared to the illustrations in the Preaching Resources Section but there is overlap. Note this section includes a Tag list showing the frequency of key words in the illustrations.

5. Tag terms displayed as tags may also be displayed in cloud form.

6. The final order of the illustration is a list by tag.

7. Note the more function works in an unusual manner ... it adds the nest tags in frequency order but enters them alphabetically meaning they are inserted throughout the original list rather than being appended to the end,

8. At the end of each tag list, one is given the option of running a Topic Guide; if the tag represents a Preaching Theme, the option to run a Sermon Starter Guide is also offered.

9. The Outline section runs off Labels. I strongly want to be able to add labels as I can for sermons as my favorite sources for outlines and the resources Faithlife has coded for outlines have little overlap.

10. As usual with references, one may get a preview of the outline or open the resource to the outline.

This covers all the default sections in the Sermon Starter Guide.