Writing a Sermon in a Pinch

One hour in the study for every minute in the pulpit. That's the old line that many, usually short winded, preachers use. But as any pastor who preaches knows, sometimes the week doesn't give much opportunity for sermon work. If you are preaching 25 minutes, 25 hours of sermon work isn't realistic on most weeks in general anyhow. Ideally of course, the sermon processes we were introduced to in seminary and modified to make our own over years of preaching keep us working ahead on crafting deep and rich sermons. Unfortunately, some times three funerals and a wedding fall all in the same week as a heated board meeting, a personal family crisis, or some other time eater. When this happens, we may need to write a sermon in a pinch. Here's how. 

• Go to a familiar and meaningful passage. Try to find a passage that has affected your life in significant ways and continues to do so. It can be a life verse of sorts, or a verse you just bumped into again the last week. Ideally it will be in a book of the Bible you have researched before and are familiar with without extra intensive exegetical work. 
  

• Get familiar with the passage again. Read it out loud several times. Circle a few words that strike you as interesting. Read it in a different translation. This can all be done in ten to twenty minutes of work. 
  

• Use your most comfortable sermon form. If you are a narrative preacher, now is not the time to force a point-based sermon out of your brain, or vice versa. If you typically preach with verse by verse commentary, don't change that this week. Mentally lay the sermon form like a transparency over the text. In narrative sermons something like a conflict-resolution pattern should emerge. In point based sermons a controlling thought with supporting thoughts should come to the fore. Write those elements down on a pad of paper or your computer. 

• Write a central preaching sentence. So far, your work may not have taken an hour. Certainly this kind of process allows little room for bringing you up short, surprising you in great ways, or fully forming you in the process. But, you are in a pinch. Let go of your ideals for a week. Write a sentence that you think summarizes the heart of what you see in the passage that can serve either as a refrain, or as a centralizing claim of the sermon. 

• Brainstorm sermon illustrations for each of these categories: metaphor or analogy, inspirational true story, hypothetical situation. For the first, you can fill in the blank of this sentence "In this passage God is acting like..." or "ignoring this passage would be like..." For the second category think of a true story which illustrates the problem of the text, the central principle of the sermon, or the application of the message in contemporary life. For the last, think of it like creating a parable. "A certain woman was..." or "Imagine one of us...
  

• Do what helps you get comfortable with your sermon the fastest. For some people they have to write a manuscript before their nerves calm down. Others have to preach it out loud before they can ever feel comfortable with a sermon, manuscript or not. Some need only an outline with a supporting story, quote, image, metaphor, or application beneath each major move. Only you know what that is for your sermon. 
  

Some general tips on writing sermons in a pinch:

*  Don't be afraid to pull out and dust off an old sermon you haven't delivered at this location before. Rework the sermon to be sure it is fresh. Reengage your own life with the sermon, how should it change you this week? 

*  Often you cannot use an old sermon in toto, but a sermon illustration from a different sermon can give this new sermon the wings to get off the ground. 

*  Sometimes a good quotation from a  trusted source can drive a large section of a sermon. If you find one, you can treat it as a secondary text for exposition. Walk through the quote word by word. 

*  This process shouldn't be your weekly pattern or over time the depth of your sermons will be shallow, the motivation you have in ministry will decrease, and your own personal spiritual formation will suffer. But for a week of crisis, you need some grace. 

© 2010 David B. Ward All Rights Reserved.