"No sermon is ready for preaching until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence. I find getting that sentence the hardest, the most exacting, and the most fruitful labor in my study. This is surely one of the most vital factors in the making of a sermon; and I do not think any sermon ought to be preached or even written until that sentence has emerged, clear and lucid as a cloudless moon."
-- John Henry Jowett. Leadership, Vol. 11, no. 2