How to Write a Sermon

What a sermon is — and what it is not

A sermon is a spoken address that makes a claim about God from a passage of Scripture and asks something of the people listening. All three parts matter. Take one away and you have something else — often something good, but not a sermon.

One of the oldest descriptions of the work is still one of the best:

"So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading." (Nehemiah 8:8)

Read it. Give the sense. Help them understand. That is the job.

Here is how a sermon differs from its close relatives, because beginners most often drift into one of these without noticing:

• A lesson informs. It succeeds when people know something they did not know. A sermon can teach a great deal and still fail, because a sermon has to land on the will as well as the mind.
• A devotional encourages, briefly, usually from a single verse and a single thought. Fine at a hospital bedside. Thin at eleven o'clock on Sunday.
• A talk — the conference kind — is self-authorizing. Its authority is the speaker's insight. A sermon borrows all its authority from the text, which is why the text has to be visibly doing the work.
• An essay is built to be reread. Preaching is heard once, at your pace, with no scrolling back. Sentences must be shorter, repetition is a virtue, and structure has to be audible.

Use this test on your draft. Could someone in the fourth row, on the drive home, say: the Bible said this, and therefore I must do that? If they could not finish either half of that sentence, keep working.

The three kinds of sermon, worked on one text

Most preaching falls into three shapes. The names get thrown around loosely, so here they are with a single passage — Philippians 4:6–7 — run through all three.

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:6–7)

Expository

The sermon's point is the passage's point, and the sermon's structure comes from the passage's own movement. Here that movement is plain: a command (be anxious for nothing), the means God gives (prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, in everything), and the promise attached (a peace beyond understanding standing guard over heart and mind). You did not invent those three parts. Paul put them in that order. Your outline follows him.

Textual

You take your main divisions from a short text — often a verse or two — but you develop each division with material gathered from elsewhere in Scripture. Same three headings above, but under "the means God gives" you range out to Hannah, to Gethsemane, to the psalms of lament. The text sets the skeleton; the rest of the Bible supplies the muscle. Done well this is rich. Done poorly it becomes three sermons stapled together.

Topical

You begin with a subject — anxiety — and the structure comes from the subject rather than from any one passage. Philippians 4 becomes one of four or five texts you visit. Topical preaching is the right tool for a funeral, a wedding, a doctrinal question the church is actually asking. Its danger is obvious: the preacher decides in advance what he wants to say, and the verses arrive as evidence rather than as authority.

For a first sermon, preach expository. It is the most forgiving shape, because when you lose your nerve the text is still there carrying you, and it trains habits that serve every other kind. The method itself — how to move from a paragraph of Scripture to a big idea and an outline — is a subject of its own, and we have treated it at length in how to prepare an expository sermon. Start here, then go there.

Choosing a text when nobody assigned you one

If a pastor gave you a passage, thank him — the hardest decision is already made. If not, you are choosing, and beginners tend to choose badly in a predictable direction: too much text, or text that fights back.

What makes a safe first text:

• It is a self-contained unit. A whole parable, a whole narrative scene, one paragraph of an epistle. Roughly four to fifteen verses. You should be able to read it aloud in under a minute and a half.
• It has one clear point. If you cannot say what the passage is about in a single sentence after three careful readings, that is the passage telling you something.
• It is narrative or plain instruction. Gospel accounts and short epistle paragraphs are the friendliest ground. The meaning sits near the surface, and the shape is easy for listeners to follow.
• You already believe it. Not "I could defend it" — you have lived under it long enough that it has cost you something.

What to avoid the first time: Revelation and apocalyptic generally; the Song of Songs; genealogies and legal codes; imprecatory psalms; any passage whose main interest is a famous interpretive crux. Also avoid the text you have picked because it settles an argument in the church. That is a sermon about the argument, and everyone will hear it that way.

Four texts that have carried a great many first sermons well: Mark 4:35–41, the storm on the lake — a complete story with a question at its center. Luke 18:9–14, the Pharisee and the tax collector — a parable Jesus interprets for you in the last verse. Psalm 23 — familiar, but familiarity is an asset when your hands are shaking. Philippians 4:4–9 — one paragraph, a few clear moves, immediately useful to everyone in the room.

One more decision: which Bible you preach from, and whether the pew Bibles match. Read from what the congregation can follow, if you can. There is a short explanation of the public domain translations and where they differ at Bible translations.

How to write a sermon step by step: the six-day plan

This is a week's shape, not a law. Adjust the days; keep the order.

1. Monday — read, don't write. Read the passage ten times. Out loud at least twice. Read the chapter around it once. Write down every question it raises, including the ones that embarrass you. Do not open a commentary yet.
2. Tuesday — study. Now the commentaries, the cross-references, the context. What did this mean to the first people who heard it? This is the exegetical heart of the week, and it is the part we have written about in depth in the expository guide.
3. Wednesday — one sentence. Write what the passage says in a single sentence, in your own plain words, under twenty words. If it takes two sentences, you have two sermons or no sermon. Everything after Wednesday serves that sentence.
4. Thursday — structure. Two to four main points, drawn from the text's own movement, each stated as a full sentence rather than a single word. Then application: what does this truth ask of these people, this week? Be specific enough to be uncomfortable. If you want skeletons to work against, there are three worked ones at sermon outline template.
5. Friday — write it out. Full sentences, beginning to end, including the introduction and the last line. Most preachers speak somewhere between 120 and 150 words a minute from a manuscript, so a 25-minute sermon runs roughly 3,000 to 3,700 words. That number is a sanity check, not a target.
6. Saturday — cut and rehearse. Read it aloud, on your feet, with a timer. Cut the paragraph you are proudest of if it does not serve the one sentence from Wednesday. It usually does not.

A note on illustrations, since every guide tells you to use them. One good one per point, at most, and it should illuminate the text rather than replace it. If the story is more memorable than the truth it carries, people will remember the story. That is not what you wanted.

The Friday-night plan: called on short notice

Someone is sick, someone is stranded, and the phone rings at nine on Friday. You have perhaps three or four hours. Here is how to spend them.

1. Ask five questions before you hang up (fifteen minutes, and it saves you an hour): How long do you want? What is the order of service, and what comes before and after me? Is there Communion? Who is in the room on a normal Sunday — mostly older, families, visitors? What did they hear last week?
2. Do not go hunting for a text. Take a passage you have already lived in. Short notice is not the week to be original; it is the week to be honest about something you already know to be true.
3. Ninety minutes on the text itself. Read, question, one commentary if you have one, then the single sentence. Do not skip the sentence to save time. It is the thing that keeps a rushed sermon from wandering.
4. Forty-five minutes on structure and manuscript. Two points, not four. Write the introduction and the conclusion out word for word; the middle can live on bullets, because you know this material.
5. Thirty minutes reading it aloud. Twice if you can. This is the step people cut, and it is the step that shows.
6. Go to bed. A rested preacher with a simple sermon does more good than an exhausted one with a clever one.

Aim short — twenty minutes. Few congregations have ever complained about a guest preacher who finished early and finished clearly.

How long should a sermon be?

Longer than you think, and shorter than you will be tempted to make it.

Pew Research Center's 2019 study of nearly 50,000 online sermons found a median length of about 37 minutes, with real variation by tradition — around 14 minutes in Catholic parishes, about 25 in mainline Protestant churches, about 39 in evangelical ones, and longer still in historically Black Protestant congregations, where the median ran close to an hour.

So there is no universal number. Traditions differ and congregations differ; the same twenty minutes that feels rushed in one room feels right in another. There are, however, three rules that hold everywhere:

• Your first sermon should be 20 to 25 minutes. Not because your material does not deserve more, but because your attention will be spent on delivery, and a shorter sermon fails more gracefully.
• Length is granted, not taken. A congregation gives a preacher time in proportion to how much they trust him. Trust is earned over years, and it is spent quickly by a man who runs long with nothing to say.
• Time it out loud, standing up. Silent reading badly underestimates, and most preachers run longer in the pulpit than in rehearsal — the pauses, the room, the adrenaline. If your rehearsal comes in at 25 minutes, plan on 30.

When in doubt: preach less, better. The sermon people remember is rarely the long one.

Manuscript, notes, or nothing

Write a full manuscript for your first several sermons, whatever you eventually carry into the pulpit. Writing every sentence out is the discipline that exposes the paragraph where you did not actually know what you meant. You cannot bluff a manuscript the way you can bluff an outline.

Then decide what to preach from. Reading a manuscript word for word keeps you safe and costs you the congregation's eyes — and preaching is a personal address, not a recitation. The usual compromise, and a good one: write the manuscript Friday, then on Saturday boil it down to a single page — your one sentence at the top, your main points as full sentences, your Scripture references, and the first and last lines written out in full.

Practical details that matter more than they should. Print at 14 point or larger. Break lines at natural clauses rather than filling the page edge to edge. Number your pages and do not staple them, so you can slide rather than flip. Mark your Bible with a ribbon at the text before you sit down. And write out your closing sentence — the ending is where unprepared preachers circle for three extra minutes looking for a runway.

The night before and the morning of

A checklist, because at this point your judgment is not what it was on Tuesday.

Saturday night:

• Read the whole sermon aloud once, standing, timed. Once. Do not rewrite it now.
• Print two copies. Put one in your Bible, one in the car.
• Lay out your clothes. Charge the phone. Check the start time and the address.
• Read the passage one last time slowly, not as a preacher, and pray for the people by name.
• Go to bed at your normal hour. Late-night editing wrecks more sermons than it rescues.

Sunday morning:

• Eat something, drink water, and arrive at least thirty minutes early.
• Find whoever runs the service and confirm the order, the microphone, and what happens immediately after you finish.
• Stand where you will preach, before anyone arrives, and read your first three sentences out loud in that room.
• Greet people. Learn four names. Preaching to strangers is far harder than preaching to people you just shook hands with.
• Before you stand: breathe out slowly, longer than you breathe in. Twice.

When you are terrified

You are not the first. Paul wrote to a church he had preached to with everything in him:

"I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling." (1 Corinthians 2:3)

Fear before preaching is not a defect in your faith. It is an accurate reading of the situation. You are about to speak for God to people God loves, and the weight of that is real. The apostle who felt it wrote elsewhere, "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us" (2 Corinthians 4:7). The cracks in the vessel are not the emergency you think they are.

Some things that genuinely help:

• Rehearse aloud at least three times. The first two run-throughs are ugly. That is what they are for. Familiarity is the only real cure for nerves, and it cannot be acquired on Sunday morning.
• Memorize your first three sentences. Almost all pulpit panic lives in the first ninety seconds. Get through those on rails and your body settles.
• Slow down, deliberately. Adrenaline speeds you up without telling you. Plan a pause after your text is read. Let the silence sit; it feels like an hour to you and like a beat to them.
• Find three friendly faces in different parts of the room and preach to them in rotation.
• If you lose your place, stop and find it. Say "let me read that again." Nobody minds. What listeners find uncomfortable is a preacher pretending nothing happened while visibly unraveling.
• If you go blank, go back to the text. Read the verse aloud. It buys you fifteen seconds and it puts the room's attention exactly where it belongs.

And remember what the congregation actually wants. They are not grading your delivery. They came hungry, and they are rooting for you. The sermon is not a performance you might fail; it is bread you are handing to people who need it.

After the amen

Write down, that afternoon while it is fresh, three things: what you would cut, where you lost the room, and the one moment you knew they were with you. That page will do you more good than another book on preaching, because it is about your voice and your people.

Then preach again. The second sermon is easier than the first, and the twentieth is a different craft altogether. "Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season" (2 Timothy 4:2) — the readiness is built one week at a time.

If a blank page is where you keep getting stuck, that is the problem KERYGMA PRO was built for: it walks you through six stages of questions — passage, observation, interpretation, doctrine, application, composition — and then assembles a sermon in expository shape out of your own answers. It asks; you answer. It will not do your exegesis and it will not hand you another man's outline. If you have honest reservations about using AI in sermon preparation, we have set out the case and the limits at AI and sermon preparation. Either way, the sermon has to be yours. Preach the one only you can preach.