How to Write a Sermon Step by Step

If you have asked other preachers for help writing a sermon, you have probably heard some version of this: "Pray until God gives you a message." "Read your Bible." "The Holy Spirit will lead you."

All of that is true. None of it helps when you are sitting in front of a blank page with nothing to say on Sunday morning.

Here is the good news. If you are struggling to write a sermon, it is not a spiritual failure. It is a training problem, and training problems have solutions. A carpenter without tools isn't lazy. He has been handed lumber and told to build a house with his bare hands. This guide hands you the tools.

Step 1: Pick your text with three questions

Every sermon starts with Scripture. Not a topic. Not a clever title. Scripture. If you do not know where to start, ask:

• What has God been dealing with me about personally?
• What does my congregation need to hear right now?
• What Scripture speaks directly to that need?

Write the text at the top of the page. Read it several times. Pray over it. Ask God what He wants to say through it.

For the weeks ahead, start a Scripture inventory. When a verse speaks to you in your daily reading, write the reference down. When another preacher's text stirs something in you, write it down. You will never face a completely blank page again.

Step 2: Find the problem in the text

A sermon that holds the room names a real problem before it gives an answer. Some texts hand you the problem directly. Others are promises, and that is where new preachers get stuck.

Here is the key: every positive Scripture has a problem hiding underneath it, and the problem is the opposite of the promise. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." The opposite of can is can't. The problem is believers living in the can't, sitting on their calling. Now you have a message.

Step 3: Do a brain dump

Write the problem at the top of a fresh page, then dump everything that comes to mind. Don't filter it. Stories, verses, questions, things you have seen in your own life and in your people. Sorting comes later.

Step 4: Read a commentary, after your own work

Once you have wrestled with the text yourself, read what others have seen. The book points to free help such as the Enduring Word app, which covers every book of the Bible, or Matthew Henry. Take notes on context, background, and insight you missed.

Step 5: Picture one person

Think of one specific person in your congregation who is living in this problem right now. Write the sermon for that person. Don't speak to their head. Speak to their heart. You are delivering a lifeline, not a lecture.

Step 6: Build the outline on nine steps

Now write the outline. Instead of three points, the book builds every message on nine steps:

1. Scripture
2. The Problem: build tension
3. A Glimpse of Hope: no solution yet
4. The Causes: why it keeps happening
5. Intensify: deeper and more personal
6. Another Glimpse of Hope
7. The Solution: Jesus is always the hero
8. Application: exactly what to do
9. The Call to Action: if that's you, come

Keep each step to a few words or a sentence. This is an outline, not a script. If you want blanks to fill in and a worked example, use the free sermon outline template.

Step 7: Write your stories out in full

The one part of a sermon you should write word for word is your illustrations and personal testimony. Stories go straight to the heart, but only if they are tightly connected to the point. Writing them out lets you trim what wanders and reread them before you preach.

Step 8: Add the toolbox

With the outline finished, go back and add tools where they strengthen a point: a supporting Scripture, a Greek or Hebrew word meaning, a question that makes people convict themselves, a one-liner they will remember. Add them after the outline is done, not while you are building it. See 22 tools that bring a sermon to life.

Step 9: Practice out loud, twice

Preach it out loud at least twice, as if you are actually in the pulpit. Reading it silently is not the same. Every time through you will find things to fix, and the Lord will often bring things to mind to add. Practicing out loud is also how you find out how long your sermon runs; see How Long Should a Sermon Be?

If this is your first sermon

You will be nervous. That is normal. The book's word for that moment is detachment: you are not the source, you are the channel. Get up and detach from the outcome. Don't think about whether they will receive it. Do what you prepared to do, and let God do what only God can do.

Detachment is not indifference. It is trust.

Two more pages will help with the parts of a first sermon people worry about most: how to open and how to close.

How to get better every week

The book closes with a daily practice challenge. Every day, read a Scripture or a chapter. Find either a problem or a solution. Sketch it on the nine steps. It doesn't have to be long. Do it for thirty days and your mind starts to think in the framework on its own, and Thursday night stops being so scary.

If you want the whole field manual, with every step explained, the full toolbox, help with nerves, and a funeral resource, see the book and order a copy.

More free sermon guides

• How to Prepare a Sermon — The nine sermon preparation steps, from Scripture to a clear call.
• Sermon Outline Template — A free nine-step fill-in outline with a worked example.
• How to Preach a Funeral Sermon — A chaplain's complete funeral order of service and four-truth sermon.
• Sermon Introduction Ideas — Four ways to open a sermon so people lean in.
• How to End a Sermon — Application people can do, a clear call, and a full-circle close.
• How Long Should a Sermon Be? — Why structure matters more than the clock, and how to cut.
• How to Preach a Bible Story — The eight-step Hero's Journey for narrative sermons.
• Sermon Illustrations and 22 Preaching Tools — The 22-tool preacher's toolbox and where each tool fits.