How to Write a Sermon Introduction and Conclusion

Write them last, and write them together

The introduction is the last thing you should write, and the conclusion is the first. That sounds backward until you see what each one is actually doing.

The conclusion is the destination. Until you know exactly where the sermon is going to set down — one sentence, in plain words, naming what this truth asks of these people this week — you do not know what tension the opening has to create. Write the landing first and the takeoff writes itself, because now you know precisely what problem the first sentence has to make your people feel.

Here is the mechanical test, and it takes thirty seconds. Read your first sentence, then read your last sentence, with nothing in between. Does the first one open the wound the last one closes? If they do not touch each other, one of them belongs to a different sermon.

Word budgets

Concrete numbers, because vague advice about "keeping it short" has never shortened anything:

• Introduction: 200 to 225 words. At a normal preaching pace that is about ninety seconds. Three minutes is the ceiling for a thirty-minute sermon, and you should need a reason.
• Conclusion: 150 to 180 words. About a minute and a half at the pace a conclusion should be preached, which is slower than the body. Long enough to land, too short to circle.

Write both out verbatim, in full sentences, even if you preach the body from an outline. These are the two places where improvising costs the most.

What a sermon introduction must accomplish in ninety seconds

An introduction has four jobs. Not ten. If you can name which sentence does each of the four, you are finished.

1. Create a tension your people already feel. Not a curiosity about the text — a discomfort in the room. The gap between what they are living and what is true.
2. Make the text the answer to that tension. This is the pivot most introductions skip. Attention is cheap; attention aimed at this passage is the whole point.
3. Establish that you are safe and you are honest. Usually one sentence, often an admission. People decide fast whether you are performing at them or talking to them.
4. Hand them the text. "Mark chapter four, verse thirty-five." Say it plainly and stop.

Notice what is not on the list: being interesting, being funny, being liked. Those are byproducts at best. An introduction that is enjoyed but buys no tension has spent ninety seconds of goodwill and returned nothing.

Sermon introduction examples, word for word

Most of what is written on this subject gives you principles and no transcript. Here are three, printed as I would preach them, with a note on what each one is buying. Steal the shapes, not the sentences — the sentences belong to a congregation you have never met.

Narrative text — Mark 4:35-41

There is a particular kind of fear that arrives at two in the morning. You are awake, the house is quiet, and the thing you have been managing all day sits down on your chest. And the question that comes is not usually, will I survive this. The question is quieter and worse. Does anybody see this. Does anybody care.

That is the question the disciples ask in the middle of a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Not save us. Not help us. They wake Jesus up and they say, "Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?"

I want you to notice where they were. They were exactly where He told them to go. He had said, "Let us cross over to the other side." They obeyed. And obedience took them straight into weather that career fishermen thought was going to kill them.

So here is what is at stake in these seven verses. If Jesus is asleep in your storm because He does not care, then everything you have built your life on is sentiment. But if He is asleep because He is not afraid — that changes what two in the morning means for the rest of your life.

Mark chapter four, verse thirty-five.

• Sentences one through four buy the tension, and they buy it in the body — a knot, a quiet house — before any doctrine is on the table.
• The disciples' question is quoted, not summarized, so the room hears that Scripture asked their question first.
• The "exactly where He told them to go" line removes the escape hatch of assuming the storm was punishment.
• The last movement states the stakes as a fork, which is the pivot from felt need to this text.

Epistle — Philippians 4:6-7

I want to start with a sentence that has done real damage — in this room, and in me. "Be anxious for nothing." Somebody has quoted that to you. Probably at a hospital. Probably kindly. And what you heard was, stop feeling what you are feeling, and if you cannot, add that to the pile.

Here is what I have come to believe about that verse. Paul is not scolding you. Paul is writing from prison, to a church he loves, where two women he names out loud four verses earlier cannot get along. He is not standing outside the anxiety telling you to be calmer. He is inside it, handing you something to do with your hands.

Because the sentence does not stop at "nothing." It has a "but" in it, and the "but" is where the help is.

This morning I want to show you three things Paul actually asks of an anxious person — none of which is feel differently — and then the promise he attaches to them, which is stranger and better than peace of mind.

Philippians chapter four, verse six.

• The tension is created against a misreading your people already carry, which is more useful than a general topic.
• "And in me" is the honesty sentence. It costs three words and buys the room.
• Context earns its place because it dismantles the misreading rather than decorating it.
• The last movement previews the shape of the answer without previewing the outline.

Parable — Luke 18:9-14

Nobody in this room thinks they are the Pharisee.

That is the first problem with this parable and the reason it is so hard to preach. We have had two thousand years to learn which character is the villain. So we read it, we identify with the tax collector, and we walk out feeling humble — which is the exact move the Pharisee makes.

Luke will not let us off that easily. Before he gives us the story he tells us who Jesus told it to: some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others. Trusted in themselves. Despised others. Those two always travel together, and the second one is easier to spot in yourself than the first.

So I am going to ask you to do something uncomfortable for the next half hour. Do not look for the Pharisee in the parable. Look for him in the last conversation you had about somebody else's family, or politics, or church attendance.

Then we will see what Jesus says about the man who would not lift his eyes.

Luke chapter eighteen, beginning at verse nine.

• A nine-word opening sentence. Short openings work because the room has to catch up to you.
• The tension is the listener's own defense mechanism, named before they can raise it.
• The assignment in the fourth movement plants the exact thing the conclusion will ask for — the two paragraphs are one unit.

Six ways a sermon introduction fails

Most of us come to this topic through a symptom rather than a principle. Here are the six failures by name, with the diagnosis rather than the scolding.

1. The joke that buys nothing

The question is not whether humor belongs in a pulpit. It does. The question is whether the laugh purchases anything. A joke that opens the tension the text resolves is worth every second. A joke that gets a laugh and then requires you to say "but seriously" has cost you ninety seconds and taught the room that the first two minutes are warm-up they may safely miss. Test: delete the joke. Is the introduction weaker, or just shorter? If it is only shorter, it was never load-bearing.

2. The apology

"I did not have as much time this week as I wanted." "This is a hard passage and I am not sure I have gotten to the bottom of it." You mean it as humility. What the room hears is an instruction about how much to invest. Bring your reservations about the text into the body, where they can do exegetical work. Never into the first paragraph, where they only lower the stakes.

3. Throat-clearing

Announcements, weather, the ball game, how good it is to see everybody. All fine — just not here. Throat-clearing is not a small sin of length; it teaches your congregation that the sermon has a soft edge and starts somewhere later than it appears to. Put the housekeeping before the Scripture reading, then begin cold.

4. Announcing your outline

"This morning we will look at three things: the storm, the sleeper, and the stilling." That sentence resolves the tension you just built. The room now knows the shape of the next thirty minutes and has no reason to lean in. Preview the stakes, not the structure. If you want a signpost, name the question the sermon will answer, not the parts it will answer it in.

5. The borrowed hook

A news story or illustration that grabs attention while pointing somewhere the text does not go. It will get you the room, and then you have to steer them back, which costs more than you gained. The hook has to open this door.

6. Starting where your study started

"As I was reading through the commentaries this week…" Your people did not have your week. Start where their week started, not where yours did.

How to end a sermon: land the application, do not summarize

The standard advice on ending a sermon is to summarize your points and then issue a call to action. The summary half is the mistake.

A summary is a retreat into the study. It reviews information the room already received, in the abstract voice of the outline, at exactly the moment they need something concrete enough to do on Tuesday. Worse, it is a signal — a recap tells people the work is over and permits them to disengage while you are still talking.

The conclusion's actual job is narrower and harder. It lands the application. Four things belong there, and nothing else does:

• The one thing. Singular. Not four applications for four demographics — one specific act, small enough to happen this week, that follows from the text and not from your general sense that people should do better.
• Named specificity. "Pray for that person by name before Sunday" is an application. "Be more prayerful" is a mood.
• A last look at Christ. The imperative has to rest on the indicative, or you have sent people home with a chore. Frequently this is a single line of the text, quoted, and then silence.
• A stop. Discussed below, because this is where it comes apart.

Two more conclusion failures worth naming. The new idea at the door — a fresh thought that occurs to you mid-landing and adds four minutes; write it down for next week, do not preach it now. And the bolt-on ending, the same generic appeal welded onto every text regardless of what the passage said. Your people can hear the seam. When the conclusion could follow any sermon, it follows none of them.

Sermon conclusion examples: the same three sermons, landed

Same three texts, same three sermons. Read each one against its introduction above and watch the seam close.

Mark 4:35-41

Two in the morning is coming back. Maybe this week.

And when it does, you are going to reach for the wrong question. You will ask whether He is going to still it. He may. He did that night — He got up, and the wind stopped, and the water went flat. But listen to what He said afterward, because it was not a word about the weather. He turned to the men in the boat and asked, "Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?" The storm was never the thing He was working on. They were.

So here is what I am asking of you, and it is small. This week, when the knot arrives, say one sentence out loud in the dark. He is in the boat, and He is not afraid. Say it before you have any evidence. That is what faith looks like at two in the morning. Not calm. Not certainty. A sentence you say to yourself about who is asleep in the stern.

He did not scold them for waking Him.

He got up.

• Returns to the introduction's exact image — two in the morning — which is what makes the sermon feel like one thing.
• The application is a sentence they can say, at a moment they can identify, this week.
• The final two lines shrink. Short final sentences are how a sermon lands rather than fades.

Philippians 4:6-7

You are not going to walk out of here and stop being anxious. Paul does not ask you to.

He asks you to move it. To take the thing that has been circling your mind for three weeks, unspoken and growing, and make it a request. Out loud. With thanksgiving — which is not pretending it is fine, but saying out loud that God has been faithful before.

So tonight, before you sleep, name one thing. One. Say it to God in plain words, the way you would say it to a friend who could actually do something about it. Then thank Him for one thing He has already done.

And notice what Paul promises, because it is not what we want. He does not promise the situation changes. He promises a guard. "The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

A garrison, posted at the door of your mind, tonight, while you sleep.

Let us pray.

• Opens by refusing the application the room expected, which keeps them listening through the real one.
• "Tonight, before you sleep" gives the act a time. Applications without a time do not happen.
• The text itself carries the final weight, and "let us pray" is the handoff — a stop, not an announcement that a stop is coming.

Luke 18:9-14

The tax collector went down to his house justified. He did not fix anything first. He did not clean up, or make amends, or promise. He asked for mercy, and he got it, and he walked back down that hill past the man who had done everything correctly.

That is not an insult to the Pharisee. It is an invitation to him. And it is the same invitation to you.

So do not leave here trying to be more humble. Humility you manufacture is only the Pharisee in different clothes. Do this instead. Think of the person you named in your head twenty minutes ago — the family, the politics, the church attendance. Before next Sunday, pray for that person by name. Not that they would change. That God would be merciful to them, the way He has been merciful to you.

"Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

You may go home justified.

• Cashes the assignment given in the introduction. The room feels the sermon close because it does.
• The application is unpleasant, specific, and free — three good signs.
• The final sentence is five words and ends on the text's own word, justified. Write that sentence before you write anything else.

How to actually stop

Almost every preacher who circles the runway knows he is doing it while it is happening. The problem is not self-awareness. It is that there is no written place to set down, so each pass has to be flown by feel.

Three things cause it, and each has a fix.

You announced the conclusion

"In closing." "As we come to a close this morning." The room hears that as permission and begins to gather its things. If you then keep going, you have to win the attention back, and the only way to do that is to escalate — which produces a second ending, and a third. Do not announce it. Let the change in register be the signal. When the sentences get shorter and the voice gets quieter, they will know.

You have four applications instead of one

Four applications require four landings. The sermon cannot end until the last one is delivered, and each one feels like a finish. Cut to one. The other three go in your file for the next time you preach this text.

You are waiting for a response you can see

This is the honest one. You keep going because nothing has visibly happened, and one more pass might do it. It will not. The Spirit's work on a Tuesday is not visible from a pulpit on Sunday. Preach the landing you wrote and trust what you cannot watch.

The landing card

One index card, written before the rest of the sermon exists, carrying three things and nothing else:

1. The one thing you are asking, in a single sentence, with a time attached.
2. The final sentence, verbatim. Not a bullet. The words, in the order you will say them.
3. The handoff — "let us pray," a hymn number, a nod to the pianist.

Put it on top of your notes. When you reach it, read it and stop. The discipline is not eloquence; it is having somewhere written down to land, so that ending the sermon is an act of obedience to a decision you made on Thursday rather than a judgment call you make while tired.

Where these two paragraphs sit in the outline

This page has said nothing about points, movements, or transitions on purpose. If you want the skeleton these two paragraphs slot into, the sermon outline template gives you three worked shapes; this page fills the first slot and the last one. For everything upstream of that — text selection, observation, and the formation of the big idea that both paragraphs serve — see how to prepare an expository sermon, or browse the rest of the guides.

One note on tooling, and then back to work. KERYGMA PRO is built around the order this page argues for — six guided stages that ask the questions, application settled before composition, and then a sermon composed in expository shape out of nothing but what you wrote. AI that asks; you answer. It does not hand you an outline, and it does not write your illustrations. It cannot: it has never met your people. The sentence about two in the morning has to come from someone who has sat with them at two in the morning.

Write the last sentence first. Write the first sentence last. Make them touch. Then go preach it.