S. Lewis Johnson Sermon Index
I have developed a Personal Book consisting of 1200 of Dr. S. Lewis Johnson's sermons. This isn't that, as I have just recently requested permission to post PB-tagged versions of the sermon transcripts here and will do so if permission is granted.
As a byproduct of that effort, I am posting a document that contains the metadata I developed and a link to the transcript and audio at SLJInstitute net, as they are only links and not copyrighted transcripts. This should be compiled as type Monograph. Like any compiled monograph with the Sermon metadata table, it will have thorough indexes at the end; it just won't have the sermon text. It will appear in the Sermons section of related Passage Guides. Dr. Johnson's sermons aren't dated (at least as published), so that data will be missing. Each sermon has a Web/Audio link which is a Google search of the title aimed at SLJInstitute.net. Generally, the first non-ad hit will be the one, but it could be the 2nd or 3rd hit. At the SLJ site there's an audio widget, the transcript, and their download links. Some of the Systematic Theology series pages don't have the audio (apparently they're stored on a legacy server), so there is an Alt Audio link to directly download the MP3 file (via a zip).
The SLJ site speaks of 1500 sermons. My method of discovery and retrieval found only 1200 (exactly!). It could be that there is some audio not yet transcripted, or the SLJ folks are counting some twice, as I noticed some are presented as part of the expository section and a topical section. (There also could be duplicates in my 1200 for the same reason.) The first 834 are part of expository series and are in canonical order. After that, the topical series are arranged in the order I found them.
For those not familiar with Dr. Johnson, he was quite an accomplished expositor. He pastored a church in Dallas for many years, and taught systematic theology and original languages at DTS, Trinity (IL) and Tyndale Seminary (Amsterdam).
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Thanks for this. Hopefully you will get permission..
Here is one idea for a cover Pic
You're welcome. That's the picture I used also; I just didn't think to post it.
Regarding permission, who knows? It could go either way. My observation is that while pastors/teachers are still alive, they generally allow more kinds of access, but when they are deceased, the estates frequently don't share the same attitude (which is their perfect right). In this case, it seems that Believers Chapel church actually holds the copyright, and the SLJ Institute has some level of custodial responsibilities, so I don't think an estate is involved. My understanding is that the main point of copyright law is to protect the property owner's ability to market the product. In the case of foundations and other institutions, the focus is probably to protect the content from being edited and/or re-sold. I attempted to demonstrate that the tagging I did was only slightly invasive and did not change the main body of the transcripts.
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Instead of Artificial Intelligence, I prefer to continue to rely on Divine Intelligence instructing my Natural Dullness (Ps 32:8, John 16:13a)
FWIW
JRS:
It's worth a lot, thanks. While that site (as far as I can tell) doesn't specifically distribute the transcripts, the statement certainly seems to apply to printed words. At a minimum, it indicates a flexibility on their part. I'll take it as tacit approval, run a macro to copyright stamp the docx files and post them.
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Robert,
I am curious as to how you discovered SLJ ... did you attend Believer's Chapel or maybe you were in one of his classes?
ps. I would be surprised if you don't get the permission you seek. They used to order blank cassette tapes by the pallet and send out his sermons and lectures all over the world for absolutely no cost to the recipient.
Instead of Artificial Intelligence, I prefer to continue to rely on Divine Intelligence instructing my Natural Dullness (Ps 32:8, John 16:13a)
I am curious as to how you discovered SLJ
I heard/read Drs. Feinberg, MacArthur, Lawson mention him. When I heard his audio and heard his accent, I was sure we had something in common, which turned out to be our common hometown (Birmingham). He was raised in Charleston, so he sounded a little more like my Montgomery relatives, with the old-money refined Southern accent.
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Smooth as silk. He had a speaking gift/talent/ability which you don't hear much these days. Long ago I discovered that not all good speakers are necessarily good preachers and, similarly, not all good preachers are necessarily good speakers. But when you find someone like SLJ who embodies both good preaching and good speaking abilities, well, you have found a treasure.
Instead of Artificial Intelligence, I prefer to continue to rely on Divine Intelligence instructing my Natural Dullness (Ps 32:8, John 16:13a)
Thank you very much!
Grace & Peace,
Bill
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Just a side note: Dr. Lawson refers to S. Lewis Johnson as "the best preacher you have never heard of." Of course w/ Dr. MacArthur and Dr. Lawson mentioning him, I would imagine this might not be the case anymore. Thanks for the index.
This must have been a LOT of work! Thanks for sharing this.
Hi Sean:
Make sure you find the actual full-text sermons on this thread: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/127738/831811.aspx
I made this thread to share just the index prior to deciding it was OK to post the full-text.
This must have been a LOT of work!
A good bit, yes. But, not quite so bad as it might seem; much was automated with Word & Excel, using a Word macro to convert PDFs to docx, Excel to discover and catalog the source PDFs and to collect metadata and drive the editing of the docxes. The Topics were derived from the words in the title. The Tags are the six or seven most frequently used words in each sermon (after eliminating the common "stop words").
I'm happy to help distribute this fine pastor/educator's work. Listen and read how thorough he was in exposition.
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