How Do You Prepare an Expository Sermon?
In a previous post, I talked about the importance of Expository Preaching for both Christians and their pastors. I thought it might be helpful to explain precisely how I recommend preparing to preach expository sermons, including some more practical questions about preaching in general.
I think the process for expository preaching could fairly be summarized under two points:
Find out everything you can about the passage in question.
Communicate all that as clearly as you can.
Let’s address each of these in turn.
First, find out everything that you can about the passage in question.
This probably could include 10-15 sub steps. I recommend ample time spent in the original languages, looking up cross-references, reading it in context, re-reading it, literary analysis, historical analysis, canonical analysis, and theological analysis. Additionally 4-5 good commentaries should probably be consulted for most sermons. I also recommend waiting to look at commentaries until you have done a significant amount of work; it is usually my last step before I sit down to write a sermon manuscript. To do this step well will demand a certain amount of background knowledge, regular and avid reading in the secondary literature, and a rigorous devotional life.
The essential assumption of this step is this: I cannot feed others until I am fed myself. As someone is researching a text for a particular expository sermon, he should be applying this to his own life and letting it settle into his own soul. The bottom line is that the preacher needs to try to fill himself up with everything he can about any given text before he tries to preach it. I generally think I am not ready to preach a sermon until I ask, “How in the world am I going to preach all this?” Until someone is overwhelmed by a passage, it is doubtful they will have enough overflow to feed their audience.
Second, communicate all that as clearly as you can.
Once someone is sufficiently overwhelmed by everything they’ve found in a text, turn to try to communicate that in as clear a way as possible. Let me break this up into a few steps:
To start, I think it is is enormously helpful to begin writing a sermon by summarizing everything he wants to say about the passage in one sentence. Call it a thesis, a big idea, a homiletical idea—it does not matter. You need the clarity and simplicity of a one sentence summary.
Next, put together an outline. This should be as detailed an outline as you need. If you study yourself full, write yourself empty. Do not set out to write a paper: write an outline. This might make it a full manuscript or not. But shape your outline according to your best understanding of the text AND the clearest way to communicate it.
A quick word on this: write as much as you can about the text before you work on illustrations. I recommend waiting to add any illustrations until the end of the sermon-writing process, and, ideally, to illustrate applications you want to make.
Then, edit. If you can, I recommend putting the sermon on the shelf for a few weeks (or months) then return to it. Hack it up. Edit it, revise it. Are you as clear as you thought you were? What might make this more clear? The beginner will need extensive practice in front of a mirror (or captive audience) in order to see how they sound.
Don’t forget to pray. The whole process should, of course, be bathed in prayer. But a pastor should pray over his final manuscript or outline thoroughly before he gets into the pulpit.
At last, preach it. Get in front of an audience and preach your guts out.
Finally, recap. It is a good idea after you preach a sermon to go through and listen to it again, taking note of things to improve on in the long haul. Find some others to give you feedback. I am part of a sermon-review group. These things are enormously valuable.
All this is an arduous and taxing labor, but there are few things quite as satisfying as getting to see people’s lives be changed by the preaching of God’s Word. So, if you are just starting out or trying this process, don’t give up!
It might also be helpful to answer a few brief questions briefly in the same space:
Outline or manuscript? Different preachers prefer different styles. Most beginning preachers will prefer a manuscript. I personally use a detailed outline.
How much time should I spend studying? As much as you can. If you are a bivocational preacher, the reality is that you might not be able to dedicate 15+ hours a week to preparing an expository sermon. That is okay. My general rule of thumb is that for every hour you spend preaching, you should spend 10-15 hours preparing to preach. Most beginners will need to spend about 20 hours in preparation, but by year three or four (approx 150-200 sermons), they probably can pare this down quite a bit. I would also argue, that if you are reading a lot of theology/biblical theology in your down time, doing Bible study with others, and taking classes, your capacity to study well will probably increase. You probably will not spend as much time preparing any given sermon, because your lifestyle will be studious. The less you study outside of sermon preparation, the longer your sermon study will take.
Are there any shortcuts? Preparing a sermon is one of the single most difficult and rigorous disciplined activities you can do. It requires thinking on a lot of levels and hard work. It is laborious. There is no way to get out of this. That being said, after reading Jay Adam’s Essays On Biblical Preaching, I decided to try to prepare sermons a number of months in advance. The benefit of this has been that I have been able to prepare 6–7 sermons together. This has been very helpful for seeing how a whole chapter of Scripture might fit together in preaching. I gladly commend it. While there is no way to get out of the work in preaching, there are ways to work smarter. So work smart, certainly, but make sure you are willing to work if you want to preach.