Thoughts on Sermon Prep

Thoughts on Sermon Prep: 

Step 1: Pray

Before you write or study anything, get your heart right before the Lord. You want to make sure your own heart is ready to receive the word before you give it to others. At the end of the day, a sermon is something God has worked in you that you are now working out before His people. Therefore, it is critical that you start with prayer. I normally pray these three things: 

1. Pray for my heart.

2. Pray for the people’s hearts.

3. Pray for understanding of the text and clear application from it. 

Step 2: Choose a Passage & Topic

If you are preaching expositionally through a book, this is easy–just preach the next passage. If you are given a topic, I think it is helpful to choose one main passage that you work from. As a general rule, this keeps you from coming up with points and then finding scriptures for them. Instead, you derive the points of your sermon from a singular passage. 

Step 3: Exegesis 

The process of exegesis is determining what was the authorial intent that the author had when writing the passage and what does it mean for us today. This includes making observations, determining the main point of the passage, and considering any historical context that is pertinent to the understanding of the passage. 

A fundamental idea about preaching arises from this step. In preaching you are not ascribing a point to the passage, you are exposing the point of the passage to the people in a way that is clear and transformational for them. I will usually just take these notes on a google doc.

The process of exegesis could look like writing out the arc of the story if it’s narrative or building the argument of an epistle. Either way, you are trying to expose what is written in the passage. Do this before writing any of your points. 

Step 4: Develop a big idea and sub-points

After exegesis you need to develop a main idea. This main idea is the anchor for the sermon–it’s what the whole message hinges on. When people walk away from the sermon, the main idea is what they should be remembering. A good main idea is short, snappy, and effective. 

From there, you need to determine your sub-points. As a general rule, I like these to be rooted in the passage I am preaching. For example, if I’m preaching Mt. 28:18-20 the main idea and subpoints would be as follows: 

Main Point: Make disciples, not converts. 

Point 1: Submit to Jesus’ authority. 

Point 2: Submit to Jesus’ plan of spiritual growth. 

Point 3: Rest in the presence of Jesus. 

Now you might be thinking, we’ve not even cracked a commentary? What’s up with that? You are right! So far, we have not done any major writing yet. We’ve just done basic exegesis. At this point, I believe it is more valuable to wrestle with the text and the Holy Spirit before looking at other resources. If you were to look at a commentary before this step, you might be tempted to just use their outline instead of wrestling with what God would want you to say for this sermon.

Step 5: Research

For research I follow a pretty standard format. I read the following resources: 2-3 commentaries, 2-3 study Bibles, 5-6 Bible translations on the passage, and any reading selections from theological or christian living books on the passage I am preaching on. Usually this takes about 2 hours for me. If it’s a passage I’m super familiar with, probably less than an hour. If it’s one I don’t know a ton about, it’ll take more time. 

We must understand that the goal with research is to support the sermon. You don’t want your sermon to be a running commentary on the passage where you present a bunch of facts. This is key: the sermon is like a meal. It’s a lot of the best ingredients put together into a palatable meal for your people. Presenting every ingredient you have gathered would not be helpful for your people. Can you imagine if you put every ingredient in the kitchen into your cornbread? Disgusting! But a good cook knows the ingredients in the kitchen and how they work.

In the same way, you are not going to present everything you learn. But it will all support the things you do say. If everything you present is everything you learned, you are either presenting too much or did not study deep enough. 

Step 6: Write

At this point, you have great components to your sermon, you know where it is going, and now the fun begins–you get to actually write it. One of the most common questions I get is whether to write a manuscript or a content outline. It is totally up to you. My personal approach is to write a full manuscript and then review that. Part of my review process is taking my manuscript and distilling it down to a half-page that I put in my bible and preach from. You might think writing a manuscript is a waste of time, but my goal with it is to write myself clear. You might prefer to write a content outline and preach from that. Either way is fine and I’ve done both. Simply experiment and see what works for you. 

The question now comes, what components do you include in your sermon? Here is a 10,000 ft view of what I do almost every sermon…

1. Introduction

   1. Image/story

   2. Connection

   3. Tension (why we can’t do this on our own)

   4. Main Point

   5. Read Passage

   6. Pray

2. Point 1-however many points you have

   1. Explain: What does it say, what does it mean, why does it matter

   2. Illustrate: Make the ear an eye and share an example from your life, story, or something that will help this point stick in their brain

   3. Apply: Here’s how it affects your life. 

3. Conclusion

   1. To the non-believer: You need the Gospel to do this main point

   2. To the believer: A clear practice to walk away with. 

A quick note on application. I have often used something called an “application grid” when I am struggling with a specific application. How it works is you put your points on the far left on each row and then specific areas of life (family, work, the lost, hobbies, etc) in the columns. Then you fill in each one with an application. 

Step 7: Review

Don’t skip this step. Once you have finished writing, send your sermon to a few of your trusted friends who will be honest with you and get some fresh eyes on it. 

Once you get their feedback, work back through it and make necessary adjustments. 

Step 8: Slides

Most places will utilize slides during your sermon. Check with whoever you are preaching with to see what the needs are when it comes to slides. A quick note: If you are preaching in a traditional church, most of their projectors are a 4:3 ratio and not 16:9, so make sure you get the right aspect ratio for your slides before you go. Canva, Keynote, Google Slides, and Powerpoint are great tools for this.

Step 9: Practice

Especially early on, I think it is great to practice your sermon before you preach it. Honestly, it is awkward finding your voice, cadence, etc. when you first start. So take the extra 45 minutes or whatever it is and run through it at least once before you preach it. Doing this will help with being comfortable on stage and your storytelling for any illustrations. 

Step 10: Pray

Before I go up on stage I take a minute and pray, hard. Pray that God would get you out of the way, protect you from the evil one, etc. Preaching is an act of war on darkness and it will come at you. Therefore, be spiritually ready for this. Have trusted people praying for you and then get up there and send it.