15 hour, 4-Part Sermon Prep Outline

I preached my first sermon at age 16 in Mexicali, Mexico. I preached from the book of Job, a message about trusting God in the midst of suffering. I had no idea what I was doing. The people still smiled.

Fifteen years later, I have a better idea of what I’m doing, I love to preach, and I see that I have a lifetime of learning ahead of me regarding the preaching task and the preaching life.

Over the years, as I’ve learned from many different experiences and many different sources, I’ve put a few thoughts on paper about how to prepare a sermon. Recently I refined these thoughts into this little booklet, a 15 hour, 4-Part Sermon Prep Process.

This process is what works well for me. I’ve found that I work best approaching sermon prep in 4 “Parts” which I refer to as Till, Seed, Germinate, Reap (the gardening metaphor helps me approach sermon prep as a creation process where God is the primary Creator/Preacher).  I’ve also found that, for me, 15 hours is a sufficient and sustainable amount of time for weekly message prep.

This booklet represent the norm for me in sermon prep, but I often deviate from it depending on the text, the audience, and the circumstances of life. For example:

• The message I’m preaching tonight from Genesis 18 is coming together rather quickly. It has followed more of a 2-Part process and will probably come in at about 6 hours of message prep.
• Several Sundays ago my sermon required close to 20 hours of prep and I didn’t follow the 2 week prep process I encourage in this booklet.
• A few weeks ago I preached a message from one 3×5 card of notes even though I normally preach from an outline/manuscript hybrid.

As Ian Pitt-Watson said, sermon prep is like giving birth: the length and pain of labor varies with each message.

A number of preacher friends have found this booklet helpful in refining their own approach to preaching, so I post this here in hopes that some of you will also benefit.

Don’t do what I do. Do what you do. But maybe what I do can help you better do what you do as a fellow preacher of the gospel.

Download this booklet as a pdf: Sermon Prep

If you have InDesign, you’ll be able to make the pdf print out as a nice looking booklet.