4 Steps to Faster Sermon Prep (Without Sacrificing Quality)

A pastor once told me he would spend between twenty and thirty hours a week on sermon preparation. This left little time in his schedule for counseling his parishioners, leading his team, praying for his church, or planning for the future.

Few pastors can afford to devote such massive amounts of time each week to their sermons. Most are looking for ways to improve their efficiency.

I’ve written before on how a pastor or teacher can prep a sermon with just five hours each week. Here I want to explore four methods for achieving greater efficiency without sacrificing quality.

1. Discover the burden of the text
2. Know your intended length
3. Narrow your study
4. Work on the go
   Conclusion

1. Discover the burden of the text

The number one way to clarify, expedite, and fortify your sermon preparation is by identifying the burden of your text.

The Old Testament prophets often described delivering God’s Word as an act of unburdening themselves (see e.g., Isa 13:1; Hab 1:1, esp. the KJV).¹ So it is for the preacher of the Bible today. We bring the weight of ancient Scripture to bear on the problems of the modern church.

Once you feel the weight of the text—its urgency for the people entrusted to your care—I find that a similar urgency will charge your preparation.

Numerous times over the past years, I’ve struggled to collect my thoughts. The passage feels absolutely inscrutable. All I can find is a series of bland moralisms to share. And then suddenly, the passage hits me like a ton of bricks. Eureka! From there, the illustrations come naturally and the words flow from my fingers. One sermon took me all of thirty minutes to write once the burden of the text came home to my heart.

Once you feel the weight of the text—its urgency for the people entrusted to your care—I find that a similar urgency will charge your preparation.

So how do you discover the burden of a text?

Summarize the passage

Tools like Logos Smart Search with Search Synopsis can help with this. Simply query the meaning of your passage. You’ll need to do some work to take the resources and ideas it assembles and whittle them down into something digestible, but it’s a great start.

Identify intent

Look for clear indicators of intent in the passage. This can include how we ought to think (e.g., Phil 2:5, “Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus”), act (e.g., 1 Thess 4:5, “For this is God’s will, your sanctification: that you keep away from sexual immorality”), or feel (e.g., Isa 40:1, “Comfort, comfort my people”). Preaching speaks to the intellect, will, and emotions, so when the passage gives you a layup in one of these three areas, be sure to follow through.

Locate repetition

Look for words and phrases that repeat throughout the passage—and mark them. The Highlighting Tool in the Logos app provides a quick way to visualize repeating themes both on a passage-by-passage basis, but also as you work your way through an entire book.

For example, as I preached and read through Job, I started highlighting courtroom and justice language (Job 1:22; 2:9; 4:8; 9:32–33; 10:2–3; 13:3, 18; 16:18; 23:3–5). When I was studying to preach a sermon on Job 38–42, I found myself stuck on the language of Job 40:8, “Would you really challenge my justice? Would you declare me guilty to justify yourself?” But because I had been tracking this theme, it occurred to me that these chapters were the culmination of a courtroom drama that had been slowly building throughout the book. Using my highlights on this theme, I was able to tie together these threads to better feel the burden of my text.

Consider your congregation

Think about what your congregation needs. As you look at the passage, begin thinking about the people the Holy Spirit leads into your congregation or class: What might they need to hear in that moment. Consider:

• What does the moralist need to hear?
• What does the person who is broken over their sin need to hear?
• What does the non-Christian need to hear?

Make all your work in the text, all your study, all your thinking, aim at this goal. And if your aim is true, efficiency will follow.

2. Know your intended length

Runners have a finish line. Painters know how many walls need to be completed. Developers know the scope of the project they need to code. And pastors need to know the size of the sermon they’re trying to preach.

We can debate the (de)merits of manuscripting your sermon another time, but it suffices to say that a manuscript is at least your friend in determining the size of the sermon you’re trying to preach.

My personal target is around 2,500 words for a thirty-five-minute sermon. If you write in Microsoft Word using the twelve-point Aptos font, single spaced, with occasional indentation, this works out to a five-page manuscript. Alternatively, Logos has a Sermon Builder that will allow you to put target durations on your sermon and help you gauge your performance in real time.

I suggest keeping your target reasonable. I have, on occasion, exceeded my normal 2,500-word count into the 3,500-word range. The higher word count almost never translates into a higher quality sermon. In fact, keeping my word count low forces concision. And as any writer knows, the more concise and careful you have to be with your words, the better.

So define your targeted word count and ruthlessly pursue it.

3. Narrow your study

In my academic work, I enjoy burrowing through as many commentaries as I can get my hands on. My Colossians library allows me to do precedent research with nearly every Colossians commentary ever written. I love commentaries as much as anyone out there. So don’t hear this as a critique of commentaries, but here we go …

Select your conversation partners carefully. If you’re going to be efficient with your preaching, I would recommend narrowing your commentaries down to just one or two.

For help finding the right commentaries, use Logos’s Explore Commentaries page.

I first recommend using a highly devotional commentary. This helps me observe my sermon preparation as a devotional exercise throughout the week. My go-to commentaries in this space would be anything written by Dale Ralph Davis or J. M. Boice.

My second commentary would be an expository commentary. My top recommendations would be either the Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Revised) or the ESV Expository Commentary. I deploy these commentaries as a heresy-check for my sermon and to make sure I’m not glossing over any difficulties in the text. I usually use this commentary after my sermon is written.

4. Work on the go

The children of Israel were taught to engage with Scripture “in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut 6:7). Efficient and effective sermon preparation relies on similar principles.

The following helps me continue my sermon preparation, even while on the go.

Divide the task

Sermons have certain predictable elements and other unpredictable elements. I may break up my sermon preparation into chunks, such as:

• Discovering the “Fallen Condition Focus”
• Creating a structure/outline
• Enhancing and specifying applications
• Developing engaging illustrations or questions

Knowing what items are left also prepares me mentally to shift gears into whatever remains, even when I only have short bits of time.

Redeem the gaps

Even the busiest person has gaps. Gaps can be long, like commutes. Gaps can be short, like the five minutes between Zoom meetings. But we all have gaps.

Productive sermon preparation combines the dividing tasks with redeeming these gaps. As gaps arise in my schedule, I can pivot quickly from a meeting to whatever I need to work on next in my sermon.

When a pastor first introduced me to this concept, I assumed it would lead to a breakdown in my overall quality of work. But the reality was the opposite. Because I know I have a horizon of time, it forces me to work with focus and clarity. Gaps create an artificial sense of (positive) pressure that doesn’t exist when you have an entire day set aside for sermon preparation.

Listen to the Word

Listening to Logos audio Bibles will enable you to engage Scripture hands free (such as while driving, mowing the grass, or doing dishes). This will help you continue turning over the passage.

Listening to a high-quality sermon or podcast (like Paul Carter’s Into the Word) on your passage can help you find new ideas.

Leverage technology

Having commentaries and word search tools on the go via Logos is an obvious benefit.

But the additional integration between Sermon Builder and Proclaim allows for faster movement from manuscript to slides. Even if you prefer to write in Word, you can upload your document to the Sermon Manager and easily turn your main points into slides to export.

There are times when I try to remember a relevant cross-reference. Logos has improved their search functionality with AI to help locate those obscure passages using plain search phrases.

Find the tools that work well for you. You’ll find your time is better invested and your work will improve in quality as a result.

Conclusion

These four methods are not about a ruthless pursuit of efficiency. Good things often take time to do well. But sometimes, we need constraints that help us keep the good work of sermon preparation in focus.

As you expand your capacity by using methods such as these, you may discover not just greater speed in sermon preparation but also greater accuracy and power in your teaching, as well.

Phil Thompson’s recommended books on preaching

Phil Thompson’s favorites commentaries for sermon prep

Related articles

• Pastor, Learn How to Maximize Your Sermon Prep
• Sermon Planning: How to Get Ahead without Stressing Out
• Top Preaching Tools & Resources That Belong in a Pastor’s Library
• The Definitive Guide to Bible Commentaries: Types, Perspectives, and Use
• How to Preach Like John Chrysostom, “the Golden-Mouthed”