My Sermon Prep Routine

 

One of the most, if not the most, important things a pastor does is preach. The spoken proclamation of the gospel is vital to giving people access to Scripture and an avenue to Christ. I’m very fortunate in this stage of my ministry that my main priority as a pastor is preparing and delivering sermons each week for my congregation, and I’ve developed a weekly routine that helps me prepare to the best of my ability. I’m not saying this is the ideal schedule for preparing great sermons (there are a lot of times that my sermons probably aren’t that great), but it’s a schedule that has helped me be consistent, and hopefully it can help you too. 

Monday: “Rest Day.” I don’t do any sermon work on Monday to allow myself to decompress from delivering my sermon the day before. I’ll spend some time in prayer over the week’s preparation and read the passage, but that’s about it.

Tuesday: “Outline Day.” On Tuesdays, I make my sermon outline. I have a format I like to use that keeps all my sermon notes uniform, so I’ll fill that out. The intro, body, and response/application are the broader sections of my sermon, and I’ll generally focus on the outline of the body on Tuesday with the breakdown of the passage and my main sermon points. If I have my illustrations or applications ready by Tuesday, I’ll fill them in as well, but those are typically later in the week. 

Wednesday: “Reflection Day.” Wednesdays are typically pretty busy for me, so I don’t do a ton of writing on Wednesdays. I’ll usually just spend some time “reflecting” or mulling over my outline to make sure it is solid and praying over what the application/response should be.

Thursday: “Commentary Day.” Here is where the rubber meets the road for me. On Thursdays, I get out my commentaries and start diving into the meat of the sermon. Because I’m an expository preacher, I will typically just go through each commentary I’m using and type up notes from each commentary underneath each sermon point that I find relevant or important to preaching the passage. It sometimes leaves me with a bit of a jumbled mess at the end of the day, but that’s just how my brain tends to process all the information! 

Friday: “Refining Day.” On Fridays, I will go back over my notes and refine the jumbled mess that comes from Thursday’s note-taking session. This is really where I begin to define what the points say and what they mean, and it will usually help me to really develop a more defined and detailed application to the passage as a whole as well. Fridays are really where I feel I can start to put my stamp on the sermon and make it my own (while obviously making sure I stay true to the authority of Scripture). 

Saturday: “Review Day.” I usually don’t do much, if any, writing on Saturdays. I’m mostly just reviewing the sermon notes I’ve written, reading through them and how I might preach them, and even “practicing” delivering the sermon to myself to make sure it all makes sense and flows well. I often feel that many preachers get caught up in the weeds in sermons and lose sight of the bigger picture, so I’m really focusing on keeping that bigger picture at the forefront through every point and through the whole sermon. I really think that’s the key to a good sermon. 

Sunday: “Delivery Day.” I try to review my notes another one or two times on Sunday before I deliver the sermon, but with two little kids at home and other church stuff happening, it rarely happens! That’s okay, though, because if I’ve really spent the time during the week to develop and write this sermon faithfully, I know that God will use it to help those in attendance and speak to them in some way. All that’s left is to get up in the pulpit and deliver the sermon!

I’m not claiming to be the best preacher out there or to even have the best routine for preparing sermons. You may have a routine or process that works better for you, and that’s great! Do what works best for you and allows you to prepare the best sermons you can so that whoever is listening can be impacted by the Word of God. That’s really what matters in the end anyway!