The Secret to Getting Ahead on Sermon Writing

Video Transcript

A lot of pastors feel like they’re stuck on this endless treadmill of coming up with one sermon after the next. You preach a great message, you write a great sermon, you work your tail off one week, and you deliver that message, and then, before you know it, it’s Monday, and the next message is looming. And you’ve got to come up with another one.

And it can get exhausting. It can get frustrating. It can get incredibly stressful knowing that every week you need to deliver.

Well, my name is Brandon Hilgemann with ProPreacher.com, and today I want to tell you the secret to getting ahead on sermon preparation.

Let’s do this!

Most professional public speakers work for months just to craft one single message. They spend hours upon hours writing it and developing it and honing that single message to make it the best it can be. And then, they just go around delivering that one single talk to anybody who will listen.

But pastors, we are no wimps. We’ve got to preach one every seven days, or sometimes less. And sometimes it’s multiple messages per week, depending on your ministry or your situation.

And we can’t just be an expert in one subject. We’ve got to be experts on every single subject that the Bible talks about. Right?

We’ve got to know everything the Bible says about everything related to life in general. And it’s hard. It’s stressful. And sometimes that endless treadmill, like I talked about before, just gets exhausting. And you just throw your hands up and go, “What can I do about this? How do other pastors get ahead when I’m so busy, and I’ve got so much going on every single week outside of just my preaching responsibilities? How do they do it?”

Well, I want to tell you the secret of how pastors get ahead.

Are you ready for it?

Write two sermons every week.

And you’re looking at me right now like, “What? No.”

Yes, we all know the math and that’s how it works out. If you write two every week, you’re gonna get ahead. But you’re like, “I’m just trying to write one sermon. How am I gonna write two every single week? That’s a huge amount of pressure. That’s a high demand. I don’t got no time for that!”

So we give up, and we just stick to the pace of just barely making it week after week—just barely getting that sermon done just in time. And it’s not working for you.

So let me explain what I mean by writing two sermons a week, cuz it sounds really challenging. But when you break it down a little bit, it’s very manageable.

This is what I call my finish one, outline one method.

Finish One, Outline One

So what you do is: every single week you finish a sermon, and you outline a sermon. You work on the sermon for the week, and you pick a date in the future, and you work on that sermon as well. s

So what this would look like if say you’re trying to get four weeks ahead, just four weeks. How would that feel if you had your sermons prepared just four weeks out? So if something happened, if crazy stuff went down at the office, or you just had one of those crazy weeks where everybody has an emergency and is calling the pastor, you don’t have to stress because your sermon is ready to go for that week.

It’d feel pretty good, right?

So what you do, if you want to get four weeks ahead, that first week, you just write the sermon for that first week and then you write an outline for the sermon four weeks in advance—just the outline. Just get the general topic, the general idea, the scripture into the outline of what that message is going to look like.

And then you do what you normally do every single week—writing one message.

Now, it’s a little bit extra work on the front end, yes. But just wait. Once you keep going this is where the magic happens. Ready?

So then on week two, you write that next sermon, and then you are gonna outline a sermon for four weeks ahead. And then on week three, you write your current sermon and outline another sermon four weeks ahead. And by week four, all of a sudden, things change.

Now you have that outline in your hands already that you wrote four weeks ago. So on Monday morning, you just pick up that piece of paper, or you open up that Word document on your computer, and there it is, ready to go.

You got the outline for your sermon, and all you have to do is finish that one. You just gotta maybe flesh it out a little bit, add a few things that maybe have popped up that you’ve thought about. And you just finish that message, get it ready to go, prepare it, and ready to deliver it on Sunday. And then you outlined one more in the future, just like you’ve been doing every single week.

Trust me on this one. This works out to the point where you actually get to a point when you hit that fourth week, or whatever week you’ve set for yourself in the future, that you’re doing the same amount of work now to just write one single message.

You’re bringing one message up to an outline, and then you’re taking another message from an outline and bringing it to completion.

So you’re just doing a start to a finish, writing one sermon in total. You’re just doing it in different phases on two different sermons. And you can get as far ahead as you want this way.

Now, if you want to learn more, I go into a lot more details in my online course Best Preaching Year.

And I flesh this out and show you exactly how to do it, step-by-step, and how to finally get ahead on sermon preparation, and a whole lot of other things that I think would be really helpful for you.

Here’s the link to my peaching course, if that’s something that would be interesting to you. But if not, I dare you to try it out. Finish one, outline one.

Pick a date in the future, start outlining, and then just keep doing what you normally do every week. And before you know it, you’re gonna get caught up to the point where you are as far ahead as you’ve wanted to be.

And I’m telling you, the weight that’s gonna be off your shoulders is gonna feel amazing. It’ll feel incredible to know that this far in advance, it’s done. The work is complete. All you’ve got to do is pick up that outline, prepare it for delivery, and you’re ready to go.

So let me know what you think in the comments below.

Have you ever tried something like this? Is there a different method that has worked for you?

I’d love to hear about it. I’m always trying to learn and grow myself. So thanks for watching, and until next time, keep on preaching.