Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here
from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona
with just a quick video about the process
by which I write my sermons.
How do I write my sermons?
Well, step number one is figuring out
what I'm gonna preach on.
And for me, this is the hardest part
just because I've preached so many sermons.
I've been preaching for many, many years
and preached thousands of sermons.
So the hardest part is for me to come up
with what I wanna preach about
because sometimes I feel like I've preached on everything.
And of course that's not true.
Of course there are lots of things
that I haven't preached yet,
but I don't wanna sound like a broken record.
I don't wanna get up and preach and have people
just, oh, ho-hum, here we go again,
just hearing everything we already know.
So I really strive to be balanced
and to preach on a variety of subjects.
So when I'm deciding what to preach,
one of the biggest questions I ask myself is
what have I not preached in a while?
What have I not covered lately?
Or what kinds of sermons have I not done lately?
So I'll usually look at my last few months of preaching
and try to come up with something
that I haven't touched on in a while
or maybe a portion of scripture
that I haven't covered lately.
Maybe I've been a lot in the Old Testament,
so I wanna go to the New Testament or vice versa.
So I pick a topic about which I'm going to preach.
So that's step one is just coming up with the topic, okay?
Now, once I have a topic, step number two is
I think of all the Bible verses that I can
that deal with that topic, okay?
So the Bible software that I like to use is called eSword.
So I open up eSword on one side
and then I open up Microsoft Word on the other side
and I just start pasting over verses from memory
that come to my mind when I think about that subject.
And then I'll start using the search tool
so that I can search for other verses
that have to do with that subject
that I don't remember off the top of my head.
So it's a combination of remembering and searching.
So I just start dumping all these verses
into my WordPress document or not WordPress,
what's it called?
Microsoft Word document.
So I just started dumping in a lot of verses
and the reason that I like to start with the Bible
is that this is how I ensure that my sermon
ends up having a lot of Bible verses in it.
So I want the sermon to be filled with Bible,
to be driven forward by Bible verses
and I wanna start by compiling
what the Bible says on that subject.
So that's the first step
and I'll usually load up Microsoft Word with verses
until I have at least about three to four pages
of Bible verses, okay.
So once I have those three to four pages of Bible verses,
then step three is that I start to organize them.
So I look for themes or different connections
between verses or just verses that kinda go well together
and so I start grouping the verses
and then they're just naturally becomes an outline
because you just start seeing verses
that all say the same thing
or all talk about something similar
and then that becomes a point.
So then it's like okay,
well that's a point that needs to be made
and then these verses over here are making a different point
so usually I'll take all these verses that I've moved over
and they will naturally kind of just congeal
into three points, four points, five points, whatever
as I categorize them.
So then I add in those points
and that's pretty much it for how I write my sermons.
Now at the end of the day,
the finished product of my sermon
basically just looks like this.
At the top it has a title
and then it has the chapter
that's gonna be read by the congregation
before the sermon starts
and then it'll just say point one
and then it'll be like a sentence or whatever that point is
and then just list a bunch of verses.
Point two, list a bunch of verses.
Point three, list a bunch of verses.
So that's what my sermon outlines look like now in 2018
but that's because I've been preaching for a long time.
I've preached thousands of times.
When you're a beginner,
you need more to your outline than that.
That's not gonna be enough, okay.
So I'm gonna add step four, okay
and I still to this day do this sometimes
although most of the time my outline
is just points and Bible verses.
Even to this day,
sometimes I'll do a more elaborate outline
if I'm preaching on a difficult subject
or if I just really wanna make sure
that I cover certain things
and so step four is to add in other cues
and explanatory material into the sermon outline.
So step one is picking a subject.
Step two, copy and paste Bible verses into Microsoft Word
that have to do with that subject.
Step three is to organize them into their natural points.
Let them kind of naturally form into points.
Find the things that are similar to each other
and put them together
and then those are your points, right
and then just type in the points.
So step four I said was to add in additional notes,
cues, explanatory material, et cetera.
What do I mean by that?
Well, sometimes I add little instructions
to myself, notes to myself in the sermon outline
for example that might say,
tell this particular story here
or use this illustration here
or tell this soul winning anecdote here.
So I'll put little cues like that
or I'll put other cues in the sermon outline
that are cues to the congregation
like turn to Galatians chapter four,
turn to Genesis 21
so that it reminds me to tell the congregation
to turn to that scripture at that time.
I'll also sometimes just put entire sentences.
If there's a certain statement that I wanna make,
it's not one of the points
but it's just a statement that I wanna make,
a sentence that I wanna make clear
and I don't wanna forget it,
then I'll sometimes type out that whole sentence
into the outline.
Now you don't wanna type out every word of the sermon
because then you're just standing up there
reading off of a paper and that doesn't really work.
You have to be able to preach from your heart
and from memory, okay?
So you don't wanna type too much
but like I said, when you're more of a beginner,
you're gonna need to type more sentences,
more notes, more cues
and as you've been preaching for a really long time,
you'll need less and less than that, okay, as you go.
Now, what do you do when you're preaching
and you get lost, okay?
There are a lot of times when I'm preaching,
even if I have a good outline,
even if I'm following my outline,
every once in a while, I just have a brain freeze
and I just get lost up there, okay?
Well, when you get lost up there,
you're really glad you have an outline
and especially you're glad if you have a good outline
because the outline will save you
when you get up there and you freeze
and you lose your train of thought,
which happens to me constantly.
Now, you probably don't realize that it's happening to me
because I have a little trick for when this happens to me
and I wanna share that with you
so that when you're preaching,
if you have that problem
where you just lose your train of thought,
you'll be able to fix it.
Here's what I do when I lose my train of thought.
If I just draw a blank for a second
and lose my train of thought,
I just look down at my outline and just look at,
okay, what's the next Bible verse
that I haven't covered yet?
And here's what I do.
I just look down at my Bible, see what that verse is
and I say, let's say it was Galatians 3.16.
I just look down at the page and just say,
turn to Galatians 3.16.
And so while everybody's turning their Bible
to Galatians 3.16, that kind of buys me some time
to figure out what I'm gonna say next,
to figure out where I lost my train of thought,
to get back into the sermon, back in the outline.
So I say, all right, turn your Bibles to Galatians 3,
Galatians chapter 3.
And then while everybody's turning,
I'm looking at my outline trying to figure out,
okay, where am I?
What do I do next here?
And then usually I can jump back in
and only my wife or someone who knows me really well
would realize that I lost my train of thought
at a moment like that.
Okay, so let me give you an example type of a sermon.
Okay, let's say I wanna preach a sermon on hell, okay?
Well, I start out by just pulling verses out of memory
that have to do with hell.
Then I just start maybe searching the word hell or fire
or furnace or other terms like that
and just start bringing over scripture.
And this is kind of a rough example
because of course with hell,
you're gonna have way too much material.
You're gonna have a lot more than four pages.
But anyway, I would just start bringing over
Bible verses on hell and then start to organize them.
And I start to see interesting points
that need to be made and things that need to be preached.
Like for example, I might see a lot of verses
that have to do with the fact that hell goes on forever,
that it's eternal punishment.
So then, okay, that's one of my points.
And then I start putting all those together.
And then maybe I decide to do a point
about how hell is literal fire.
And then I search through all my verses
and find the best verses to support the fact
that hell is a literal fire or where hell is located
or whatever, who's going there?
Whatever you wanna do, whatever you decide
needs to be preached, whatever people need to hear,
that's what you're going to make your points.
And then once you do that,
you're gonna find a lot of verses
that just don't fit any of your points.
Once you've got three great points
and you've got great supporting material,
then there are gonna be all these other leftover verses
that don't fit in any of your points.
Then what you'll do is just delete those from the document
and save those for a different sermon,
preach those another time.
One of the biggest mistakes I see people making
when they're beginner preachers,
they try to cover too much in one sermon.
So don't try to cover too much, just pick one thing.
I'd rather cover one subject really well
than to do two subjects poorly or three subjects poorly.
You know, I'm not gonna preach a sermon
describing both heaven and hell in the same sermon.
Why?
Because heaven needs its own sermon
and hell needs its own sermon.
I mean, you know, it would take you many sermons even
to just get through the material on hell.
So, you know, you don't wanna try to cover too much
in one sermon, okay?
Just pick one thing and just search
and find all the scriptures you can on that one thing
and just really hammer that one point
and drive that point in.
Anyway, I hope this video is helpful for you
if you're a preacher or if you wanna preach
and if you're learning.
God bless you, have a great day.