Essay on Sermon Preparation
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, Th.M.
© 2003
Writing sermons is a very personal and individual sort of thing, sort of like giving birth. Every woman who gives birth goes through the same sorts of things, but no woman goes through it quite the same as any other women. So it is with writing sermons: there are certain steps in preparation that every preacher should do, but it’s a safe wager that no two preachers enact those steps in identical fashion.
That’s also the reason why I wish to contribute this essay. I am not the most experienced preacher in the world, nor am I the best. But looking at different models of how the task is done is always beneficial, and so I offer my “model” here, in hopes that it will help others as others have helped me.
Now, in this essay I want to emphasize what’s different about the way I write sermons. I am assuming that the readers of this essay have all had some seminary training, or will have it, and know something about exegesis, and homiletical construction, and how to avoid the passive voice and so forth. All of that is important, and you should pay attention to it and endeavor to do your best when writing sermons. Parse the Greek words and figure out from which trilateral root the Hebrew word derives. Avoid your exegetical fallacies and make sure your logic is really logical. When you first start writing sermons, you spend a lot of time doing that stuff. After several years of sermonating, you’ll find yourself doing it a lot less, hopefully because you’ll get better at it (or at least quicker), and not because you’ve gotten lazy and have just started cribbing from Spurgeon or getting your sermon outlines from sermons.com (the Internet is so handy – when I was starting seminary, you had to get those kinds of cheats in the mail).
First principles, or to quote the future Maria von Trapp, the beginning is a very good place to start (that’s where God started things too, Gen 1:1). Nothing beats knowing the Bible inside out (upside down, rightside up, and backwards/forwards doesn’t hurt either). Of course, the word of God is of such nature that we can never become masters of it: we will always remain students. But a thorough knowledge of Scripture is a tremendous aid in sermon selection and preparation (and counseling, and a lot of other things that pastors do). More than once I’ve become aware of a need in a congregation, and after some prayer and reflection, the Spirit brings to mind just the right Scripture to bear on that situation. If that sounds too much like getting special revelation, it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been pursuing my usual disciplines of regular Bible reading, study, and memorization. It also helps in preaching a biblically balanced sermon, and knowing what supporting Scriptures to bring in as you actually develop your points.
The congregation senses this too. I once preached at a church where the pastor had recently left, for reasons unknown to me. I found out why at the fellowship lunch following the service. A church member said to me “I won’t say you’re the best preacher I’ve ever heard” (thereby showing a fair amount of wisdom) “but at least you know the Bible!” When I asked one of the elders why she phrased it in that way, he informed me that the pastor had been asked to leave precisely because he did not know the Bible. His theology was “generally” correct, but he often misquoted the Scriptures in both preaching and teaching Sunday school, and the congregation for some reason thought that as their pastor he should know the Bible really well (what amazes me is that he got all the way through seminary and presbytery with this deficiency).
This brings up another point, and I’m about to commit homiletical heresy (so keep it quiet, ok?). Systematic theology is every bit as important
in sermon preparation as exegesis and biblical theology. Now note that I said “every bit as important”
which implies that the first two disciplines are important, and they are. But reflect with me for a moment on this
whole preaching thing. Why are we able
to say more from the passage than the passage actually says? Why don’t we just read large passages of
Scripture, and simply leave it at that (as an elder did once when I was given
bad directions to a church, and was nearly an hour late). Well, part of it is that we can see
implications in the text based on other passages of Scripture, and nothing
helps us to make those connections better than systematic theology. For example, I’m preaching on 1 Pet 3:13-18
this week (that’s a homiletical, not an exegetical, pericope by the way).
So, how do I actually prepare the sermon, from selection to Sunday morning? Jay Adams suggests that ideally a passage should be selected 6 months prior to preaching it, and worked on regularly until it is preached. When I first read that, I thought “I don’t know what planet you live on, Jay, but it must be better than this one!” Similarly, there was a famous preacher (whose name escapes me) who claimed that he always read through a book 50 times before he started preaching on it (Irving Jensen, in his book on inductive Bible study, gives similar advice). I thought that was really good advice, until I tried to do it. Yet both preachers are really saying the same thing: the passages should not be approached “cold” so to speak, a few days or a week before preaching, but one should be thoroughly familiar both with the text and the context prior to actual preparation for the sermon. This is where my comments above are applicable: if the pastor is daily ingesting large amounts of Scripture in various ways, it makes sermon selection and preparation much easier. Most of my sermon ideas and topics have come from just such times spent in the Scriptures (except for ideas that I have shamelessly stolen from other pastors, but even then, I rework those ideas through the filter of my own study, reflection and prayer). By the way, if my text is from a shorter book of Scripture, I read through that book once a day until I preach the sermon. If it’s from a really long book (like Isaiah or something) then I try to read through the entire book prior to preaching the specific text. I follow a similar regimen if preaching through a book: once a day for the shorter books, once a week for the longer (although I haven’t preached through any really long books yet, but that’s what I plan to do when I have the opportunity).
So then, I have a text in context to keep it from becoming a pretext. It’s now time to wrestle with the text, to beat it up and fight with it. I find that the text always wins these kinds of contests, and God often communicates to me things I didn’t expect, including uncomfortable things in areas I have to change. One of the “worst” parts about this endeavor. One of the most helpful things while doing all the neat exegesis is remembering to pray. Remember, only the spiritual man can receive the things of the Spirit, and while that text itself has a lot of rich implications, at the very least, it means that there is more to our study than just studying, and that means prayer. I have also found that, for me, studying is a whole lot easier than praying, but praying is a whole lot more necessary than I ever would have thought the day I started seminary.
A word on the original languages. If you’ve got ‘em, keep ‘em, and the only way to keep ‘em is to use ‘em! Now, I have an unfair advantage when it comes to Greek. Greek is not a challenge for me, and I can do the exegetical work on a Greek passage faster than most preachers can say “antidisestablishmentarianism” (ok, that’s a slight exaggeration). However, I have known more than one pastor who started the original languages in seminary, and have kept up with them since. They all say the same thing: it gets easier if you keep up with it. And why not? The more you practice, the better you get, and it’s probably a distinct advantage not having a professor breathing down your neck and getting you all nervous about grades (now you just have the responsibility of feeding the truth to a congregation…). I suggest the ol’ one verse a day regimen, and then working up a whole passage when you are going to preach on it. If it’s a longer passage (for example, Sunday after next, I’m preaching on Joshua 24, and I don’t plan to read the whole thing in Hebrew, because too much Hebrew gives me a headache), then pick “key” verses and work on them. This helps a whole lot more than you might think, and provides a depth to your preaching that otherwise wouldn’t be there.
While working on the text like this, I find all sorts of ideas coming to me, and I start imagining how I can communicate these truths to the congregation, “preaching in my mind.” Don’t lose those thoughts! Jot them down or use a recorder, and save them for when you actually start writing the sermon.
After my exegetical work, and before I start formally writing, is the time that I hit the commentaries. Read through as many as you have and as many as you have time for. It never hurts to get several perspectives on the text, and often you’ll find one or two really good points that you missed in your own work. Example: it never occurred to me when preparing this week’s sermon that 1 Pet 3:15 was in part a quote from Isaiah 8:13, and I picked that up from, of all commentaries, James-Fausett-Brown. That strengthened the point I wanted to make, that setting apart Christ as Lord means setting apart Christ as LORD (i.e., Yahweh).
Now I start writing, and I normally write out an entire sermon word for word, not just an outline. Occasionally I start with an outline, but that always turns into a complete sermon. I sort of just “vomit” it out until it’s all written down (I know, lovely imagery). This is where I incorporate all my nifty notes from earlier: usually about half I never use, but that’s ok, because if I hadn’t written them down, I’d use a lot less than half. I then spend the next day or two revising what I have written until my subjective sermon-o-meter registers “happy.”
And yes, I’m one of those preachers that takes an entire sermon in the pulpit with me, me and Jonathan Edwards. If he can do it, I can do it! I find that it helps me not only to control my time in the pulpit better, but it actually enables me to be more spontaneous. One time, I had a person faint on me in during the sermon (talk about powerful preaching – actually, he had a medical problem). Stop or go? An elder waved at me to go on, and I was sooo glad that I had that full text in with me. That it is one of the few times that I literally read a portion of my sermon rather than preaching it. However, it may be that an outline works better for you, but if you use an outline, write a complete copy first, and develop the outline from the complete copy, retaining those phrases and sentences that you want to be sure to get right.
Full text or outline and notes, you should be so well prepared that you have only occasionally to glance down at your written text. I practice by reading through the sermon several times, including once or twice out loud (sometimes you can hear that something is awkward that you can’t see when you read it). Occasionally I record the sermon (on my computer, simply because it’s convenient), and then play it back to hear how it sounds.
Well, that’s my approach, and as I said on another occasion, it’s more of an attitude than a method. But I hope that there is something in it that will encourage you in your work.