Preacher's Block

This preaching tip was shared by Preacher’s Block co-founder, Hunter Bethea. If you’re interested in joining the most focused preachers in the world and getting these tips sent to your inbox every week, sign up here.

A question I’ve wrestled with as a preacher is: When do you start writing your sermon?

You read the text, take lots of notes, do some research, try to outline… but when is the right time to get some words on the page?

I’m not sure that there’s a “right” time—and I’m guessing that a lot of it has to do with your personality and how God made you as a preacher—but I’ve found that there comes a point where I can’t help but start writing the sermon. I’ve soaked in the text, written down questions and observations I’ve made about the passage, chased some rabbit trails in commentaries and finally, I feel like the sermon is stuck inside a pressure cooker, ready to explode, and I have to write.

I’ve learned to wait to put words on the page until that moment when the sermon is about to burst out of me.

If I rush that and try to put words on the paper too early, I find that it becomes drudgery to write my sermon and I’m often not very happy with the sermon. If I force myself to finish my prep before I put words on the page (whatever “finish” looks like), I find that I’ve lost the spark and energy to write a good sermon quickly.

This takes patience (and it frustrates me when the pressure cooker isn’t ready to burst until Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning), but when I wait, good things tend to happen.

Like I said, this may not be the kind of preacher God has made you to be, but I hope sharing how I know when it’s time to write might help you know when it’s time for you to write.