Below is a very simple introduction that I wrote for my brother before the first time he had to preach. I was going over it again to walk through with a young man in our congregation as he prepares to preach for the first time.
If you have never preached before, or are new to the craft, I hope this is helpful to you. For those who’ll never preach, maybe it will give you a little glimpse of what’s going on in the lead up to Sunday morning (turns out the preacher has to work more than one day per week!).
Of course, I’m not saying everything that could be said here. A season preacher may read this and think, “how could you have left out____?!” Well, drop a comment below to tell me what I missed.
An Introductory Guide to Sermon Preparation
Introduction:
Below I’m going to outline something approximating the process I go through to move from text to sermon. I don’t necessarily check off every box every week, but this is the rough process. Where possible, I’ll include a link if you want to read more on each point.
Pick a text. It’s easier to select a portion of scripture based on some natural separation in the text (a specific Psalm, a natural division in a narrative, a particular Proverb, a paragraph in an argument, etc). The earlier you pick your text the better off you’ll be, because the work can’t really get started until you’ve done that. If you have to preach for any length of time, I strongly suggest picking a book of the Bible and starting to work through passage by passage. This removes one of the biggest stressors in preaching: what are we going to talk about next week?
Work to understand the selected text. In Jen Wilkin’s book Women of the Word she summarizes the process with the acronym CIA: Comprehension (understanding the words, sentences, paragraphs, etc), Interpretation (understand what the author meant to convey to the original readers by those words), Application (how does that original meaning impact my life/thinking/heart today). Most of the rest of what I’m going to list after this is just an extension of the Comprehension and the Interpretation, and then the sermon writing is figuring out Application for myself and the audience together.
Read your passage. Over. And over. And over. Listen to it. Have someone else read it to you. Read it in more than one translation. Go verse by verse and summarize each verse in your own words. Try to notice if there are words that are repeated, and write down any questions which come to mind. Try to answer those questions. The goal of reading over and over is to come up with the main meaning of the passage: what was the original author trying to communicate to his original audience? Once I’ve determined that main meaning, then I want to see how the other pieces of the passage build to or otherwise support that meaning.
Summarize, in one sentence, the driving theme of the sermon. I don’t always do this, but believe me, the sermon is better when I do. I’ve also heard it suggested by some that this sentence should be less than 11 words, which makes it clearer in your mind. Then make sure everything else you say in some way is serving that sentence. For example, for John 3:16, my sentence might be something like: “Receive the eternal love of God by believing in his Son.” You might notice that the verse is focused on what God has done. The sermon sentence is focused on an action in the congregation. Preaching expects a response, and so sermons should be constructed accordingly. I don’t just want the congregation to know about God’s love, I want them to receive and experience that love. So you explain the text, but you also press home the need to respond to the truth in the text.
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Try to outline the most logical progression of the points. Sometimes that just follows the order in which they arise in the passage. Sometimes you might rearrange in order to make it more memorable or easier to follow.
Once you have your points outlined, try to come up with both illustrations (that show this truth in action; this could be a story, an analogy, sometimes even a joke works here) and applications (what do I do with this truth?) for all of your points. They might not all make it into the sermon, but try to think it through and make sure that your sermon does have both illustration and application. Illustrations help people understand and remember, and application is what they’re looking for as the “take-home” value.
Once you have that structure in place, then it’s easier to start writing. The two most important sections to focus on writing are the introduction (you’re trying to get their attention/earn a hearing) and the conclusion (people can get over turbulence in-flight so long as you don’t crash the plane at the end).
On a really practical note, type in a font that’s easy on your eyes and convenient to read. Times, Georgia, Cambria, etc. Basically any serif font that is easy on the eyes. I also want the font to be big enough to easily read, so at least 12 point. And you should also consider line spacing. I prefer 1.5 (most word processors are set to 1 or 1.15; college papers are usually 2 or “double-spaced”). You just want the lines far enough apart that you don’t get lost moving through.
As far as length, until you get comfortable, I’d shoot for 20-25 minutes. For me that is about 5ish pages of 12 point 1.5 spaced manuscript, also taking into account bigger spaces for new sections of the sermon, etc.
Pray your heart out. This should really run through the whole process, but especially getting ready to preach. And I find I do some of my hardest praying while I’m preaching.
I hope this is helpful. If it’s not-well, you get what you pay for! If you need any other help, advice, etc-just holler! I’m more than glad to help in any way I can.