My Weekly Sermon Preparation Process
When I was a child, my grandfather was the manager of a slaughterhouse in southern Missouri. I am sure there were some codes broken in the process, but when I would go to stay with Grandpa Terry and Gran Gran (what we called our grandma), I would get to spend at least half the day at work with him. I cannot tell you how sausage is made, but I can tell you exactly how your hamburger goes from mooing and munching on grass to on a bun with all the fixins.
Weird? Maybe.
Pretty awesome to a 10 year old? Yes indeed.
Behind-the-scenes looks at processes are fairly interesting to most people. Maybe the route your food takes to get to the table is not something you would want to know the nitty-gritty of, but it is a pretty common question for all of us to ask, “How does ____________ happen?”
One of the most common questions I get asked about my job relates to the process required to put together a sermon. The question comes in different forms, but once a person feels comfortable with me, it is typically only a matter of time until they ask one of the following:
How long does it take?
How do you do it?
When do you start?
Where do you start?
Is it difficult to do that every week?
So, here is my process for those that are interested.
Some precursors:
I know and interact with a number of pastors who serve churches of various sizes. Pretty much every one of them has a different process that takes a different amount of time.
Some pastors are pretty quick when it comes to putting together their sermons. Some take more time. I think I fall somewhere in the middle.
The process is the same every week. I do not skip steps. It does not change. I am pretty firn with the benchmarks for each day. The process is the means by which the Holy Spirit speaks to me regarding any particular passage of scripture and how to relate it to my congregation in our context. If you know me well, that should not be a surprise. I am a person who thrives on routine. If I do not follow the process, I do not feel prepared to faithfully unfold the truth of scripture to my congregation.
This is descriptive, not prescriptive. I am in no way saying this is the way anyone else needs to go about putting together a sermon or bible study. This is what works for me. I am not nearly far enough along in my ministry/preaching career to be making declarations about how something should or should not be done. If a seminary professor reads this, they may be appalled.
With those in mind, here is “how the sausage is made.”
For the most part, I am working one week at a time on a sermon. Some people are able to get way ahead, but at this point in my ministry and preaching career, I am not there.
Initial Steps
I lay out a sermon series months ahead of when it is going to begin. As an example, our church is currently working through the book of Hebrews in our Sunday morning services. The series that will come next, Esther, is already in the works. In fact, it is already laid out and I have already done one of the most significant portions of my preparation: working through the text personally.
Months ahead of a sermon series, I work through it without any thought of how I preach it. I am doing this daily and would be if i were not in ministry. My only goal in this is to study the book devotionally. I write all over my bible, make notes like crazy, underline stuff, circle phrases, draw lines linking things together, pray about how that passage intersects with my own life. Where do I need to grow in obedience? What might I need to repent of? How is the Holy Spirit using any given portion of that book in my life personally? With Esther, this took place back in September and October of 2019.
Here is why this step matters: I do not ever want to turn the Bible (as a whole or any portion of it) into something that I deal with for the sole purpose of preaching.
Once I decided that Esther was where we would go after Hebrews, I began the process of breaking the book into pieces that could be handled from the pulpit each week. This remains somewhat fluid even throughout a series, but I am a planner and I like to have a fairly concrete idea of how long a series is going to take and what the textual breakdown is well before we actually start. This also allows me to give other members of our preaching team plenty of time and a heads up on what passage they will be handling on any given week during the series. I need to work week-to-week on sermon preparation, but I do not expect them to do the same.
Weekly Steps
How much time do I spend working on a sermon each week?
Short answer: ~20-25hrs.
Long answer: I am basically constantly thinking about it. From the moment one Sunday sermon ends until the moment our first service begins the next week, the sermon is bouncing around in the back of my head. It is pretty common for me to start thinking about the next week’s sermon as I am walking to my car after church. I am thinking about it when I am out on a run, eating lunch, brushing my teeth, trying to fall asleep, walking the dog, driving from one place to another, etc. How should I word something? Is that illustration the best one available? Is there a straight line of thought that runs from beginning to end? Is it clear? Is it concise? What are the natural questions that someone might ask about this passage and how can I answer those preemptively? Is there something particularly challenging or confusing that needs special attention? How should I nuance a particular portion? How does this timeless, scriptural truth intersect with my congregation’s current cultural context? Those questions are happening all the time. I am always watching the events around me for possible sermon illustrations, whether for the upcoming week or for some time in the future. I am constantly tinkering with word combinations in the back of my mind for the upcoming week. Sometimes I will grab my phone in the middle of doing something else because the wording of a phrase finally solidified in my mind and I want to jot it down before I forget. My wife knows that all to well. Sorry, Mel.
Here is the process by day
Sunday: After church on Sunday, I typically head home, eat lunch, and take a nap. I cannot really describe the fatigue that comes after preaching three services, but it is a kind of tired that is simultaneously filled with joy, yet situated all the way down into my bones. Once recovered, the goal on Sunday is simple: familiarize myself with next week’s passage. I read it multiple times. I write it out in my planner. Doing so helps me slow down and catch things I would miss otherwise. I go back and read the notes I took when I was working with the passage devotionally. I diagram the passage, breaking out the phrases/sentences, identifying the main idea, linking it to the passage we just worked with that morning, situating it in the context of the book as a whole, and taking note of any repeated words or phrases. Also on Sunday, I begin the process of reading commentary/research material on the passage.
Monday: My work day on Monday is not over until I have a sermon frame built. This is not a complete outline, but is the skeleton of one: The big idea or takeaway for that week’s sermon, the main points that will comprise the body of the sermon, the application point(s) for our congregation, and the landing spot for the conclusion. I spend Monday mornings praying through the passage, reading the whole book or section of the book that the passage is located in, reading the passage aloud (again, this helps me catch pieces that I would miss otherwise), and working my way through the rest of my research material. I do not typically read or listen to sermons on the passage. That may be a great step for some pastors, but I do not ever want to tread closely to plagiarizing some else’s sermon. Best way to do that is not to get them in my head.
Every Monday at 2:00pm, I get a number of our pastoral staff together for what we call our “Group Sermon Prep meeting.” I typically walk in with the first version of my sermon frame on a notecard, then transfer that to the whiteboard in our conference room. This is super helpful for me. Sometimes the simple act of talking through my sermon frame makes it obvious to me that there are gaps or that something is not clear. It also allows me to ask our pastoral team questions: Did I miss anything? Is there an aspect of the passage that I am leaving out? Is my line of thought clear? Is the gospel being clearly presented from my outline of this passage? What are the theological truths in the passage and how can we most clearly present those to our congregation? What are the commands or imperatives that we need to bring to the front? How can we best apply this to our congregation? Is there a specific tie we can make to something within the life of our church, within our community, or within our larger social/cultural climate?
This is the notecard I took into our Monday afternoon meeting as we were discussing Hebrews 10:11-18. As you can see by the blank space at the bottom, our questions and discussion that day focused on how to apply this particular passage to our congregation.
Is this portion of the process absolutely necessary? Probably not. But I am a millennial and one of the things we like to do is work together. I love our pastoral team at LCF. I do not, for one second, think that I have all the answers at our church. I do not, for one second, think that I am the only one in the office who can take a passage of scripture and pull out its truth. In my mind, it would be silly not to bring in the perspectives of those on our staff. Also, because the majority of the people on our church’s preaching team are on our staff, they are hearing me work with the book week-to-week, which means when they step in they know what my line of thinking has been throughout the series. I LOVE the weeks I get to come into that meeting and help one of our other pastors as they are putting together their sermon.
The notes, thoughts, and suggestions from our pastoral team on the backside of the card at the end of our meeting.
By the time I walk out of this meeting, I have made adjustments to my notecard outline, added comments to various points, jotted down the team’s thoughts on certain points, and/or made note of an article or illustration that someone said would be good to check out as I continue to build out the sermon.
Tuesday: This is our staff meeting day at LCF. That being the case, I do not typically get a ton of time to sit down and work on the sermon. At best, I will transfer the updated notecard outline to a word document on my computer. For the mot part, I use Tuesdays to try to memorize the weekend’s passage to the best of my ability. I get into the office a couple hours before the rest of our staff and start that process. Internalizing the passage helps me not have to be quite so tied to my notes come Sunday morning. I would love to get to the point where I preach entirely from memory, but I am not there. Shout out to the people who are.
Since we preach in an expository manner*, the passage of any given week sets the outline for the sermon. The main point of the passage is the main point of the sermon. With that in mind, the more internalized the passage is within me, the more prepared I will be to work through it with our congregation.
(*Note: expository preaching means that what we do on Sunday morning is walk through a passage of scripture, explaining its meaning and application. The other option would be to preach topically, taking a topic and then using sections of scripture to talk about the topic.The difference is one of starting point: Do you start with a passage and let it set the topic, or do you start with the topic and then identify passages that talk about it?)
Wednesday: My primary goal on Wednesday is to fill in the body of my sermon frame. I know that some people start with the introduction and/or the conclusion, but to me, the most important thing I do in a sermon is walk through the text itself with our congregation. I serve our congregation best when they walk out on Sunday having heard and understood the passage of the scripture and how it points to Jesus. On Wednesdays, my goal is to get that on paper. This usually ends up being about 75% of the sermon. I spend almost my entire Wednesday doing sermon preparation. The question I ask myself continuously through this portion of the process is this: Am I bringing accuracy and clarity to the passage’s main point? My goal in any week is for there to be a straight line that runs through my sermon. If I am not certain of what that line is, then I can be pretty sure that I will lose the congregation come Sunday morning.
Thursday: There are two goals for Thursday:
Have a fairly complete outline of the sermon ready to go. I do not manuscript out every word of my sermons. I use a hybrid of bullet points, semi-complete sentences, and manuscripted phrases. Everything is color-coded, too. Blue for illustrations or quotes, red for biblical texts, green for what is on a slide, bolded fonts for portions that need to be said precisely as they are written. Sometimes a person will ask if I will send them my notes from a sermon. I am typically more than happy to do so, but I always have to warn them that it may look like gibberish. What matters is that it makes sense to me when I get up to preach on Sunday.
Build the handful of slides that will accompany the sermon on Sunday morning. I do this with our graphics guy, Cory. Sometimes the sermon outline is not in its final form when we get together to do this, but I have worked out what is going to be shown, how it will be phrased, and what it will look like. If the outline is not completely nailed down, then I know what dots are left to connect throughout the rest of the day or on Friday, should I need to extend my preparation beyond Thursday. Our offices are closed on Friday, so I try not to let this happen too often.
So, there it is. Sometimes a sermon springs to life with relative ease. Other times it is more like wrestling a bear or something. Regardless, I work through the same process.
Two more important pieces:
The whole process is cloaked in prayer. Beginning to end, I am praying that the Lord would make clear what He has said in the passage, would speak through me into our congregation, would make up where I lack, would bring transformation by the power of His word. I always pray that what would speak loudest on Sunday morning is God’s Word, not Tim Fritson’s.
I am not rigid on Sunday mornings. I trust equally the Holy Spirit’s presence in the process of preparing and delivering a sermon. Some weeks, a powerful portion of the sermon ends up being something that was not in my notes or was an expansion of something that I did not come in with planned. Other weeks, I realize during first service that something needs to come out of the sermon because I could feel that it did not make sense to the congregation or aid the sermon’s overall clarity. If you came to all three of our services on a Sunday, you would notice that the sermon shifts a bit throughout the morning. Praise the Lord we can trust Him and His leading in both phases: the studying and the preaching.
