So You Want To Give A Sermon? Read This!

So, you want to give a sermon. Well, before you dive into the biblical waters, so to speak, you might want to read this article first. If you’ve seen ministers give sermons, you know it looks so easy. Well, part of the reason it looks so easy is because they work very hard on preparation beforehand. This article is going to touch on a few things you need to know before giving your first sermon so that it isn’t your last.

First of all, it’s important to know that your congregation wants to like your sermon. Nothing makes them feel more miserable than thinking that they’re going to be listening to some bore of a lecture. It’s bad enough that most of them are at church because they feel that they have to be there. Don’t make them suffer through the process. Point is, they want to be on your side. They want to like what’s coming. So you’ve already got a head start on pleasing them, kind of like a comic at a comedy club.

Secondly, you need to be prepared. You CANNOT wing this. So many people have tried to go up to that pulpit and just speak off the cuff. It’s very hard to do. What usually ends up happening is that you end up wandering all over the place with no real destination in mind. These sermons usually end up going on for 30 minutes or longer. And let me tell you, any sermon over 10 minutes is in serious danger of losing the congregation. So whatever you do, don’t wing it. Be prepared!

Finally, and this is something few people think about, come with a strong speaking voice and plenty of water. Nerves are going to get to you. They get to everybody. Dry mouth is going to creep in like mold on a wet soggy day. So having plenty of water to drink is going to be a must. You’re not going to get through a whole sermon without it. As for your voice, do some vocal exercises to loosen it up before you start speaking.

Like I said, giving a sermon LOOKS easy. That’s because a lot of work goes into giving one before the first words are even spoken, such as a specific bible verse to lecture off of, a well written outline, and some personality thrown into the mix to keep everybody awake. That is what makes a good sermon.

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3 Sermon Preparation Tips

So, you want to write a sermon. It can be quite a daunting task, especially if you’ve never written one before. Where do you start? What are you going to talk about? What passages of scripture do you use? How do you tie everything up in a neat little bow? Can you even do that? After all, a lot of scripture is open to interpretation. Well, if you’re wracking your brain trying to write that sermon, these 3 simple sermon preparation tips should help.

At the top of the list of things to do is to make sure that you have a passage of scripture that you want to preach off of. A lot of times, this will lock you into a subject. For example, if you’re preaching on the Last Supper, you’re not going to stray and start talking about the sermon on the mount. Having specific bible verses in mind will make the sermon itself go a lot smoother and even, in some cases, write itself.

Another thing you want to do is start the sermon off with a related personal story. Try to make it a humorous one if you can. The reason for this is because you don’t want the congregation falling asleep on you. If you dive right into the theological stuff right off the bat, you’re going to lose a lot of your congregation before you even reach the second paragraph. Adding the human element will greatly help in keeping the parishioners interested.

Finally, you want to keep your sermon brief. A wise minister used to say, if you can’t get your point across in under 10 minutes, then it wasn’t worth getting across in the first place. One way to keep your sermon brief is to make a list of bullet points that you want to cover in the sermon itself. Try to keep them to 3 or 4 points in total. If you limit each one to about 3 minutes talking time, you should have no problem keeping your sermon to around 10 minutes.

There are other things you can do to improve your sermon, but we’ll cover those in future articles. In the meantime, if you follow the tips I’ve outlined above, getting a specific passage of scripture, starting off with a personal story, and keeping the sermon to about 10 minutes, you will find that your sermon will go over a lot better with the congregation and they won’t end up falling asleep on you.

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