It took me 34 years to develop my weekly rhythm for sermon prep, but I can share it with you in just a few minutes.
It’s about walking with God all week so you can stand and speak His Word with clarity and passion.
Here are practical sermon prep steps any pastor can adapt. 🧵 Sunday Night → Begin with the Text 📖
Read next Sunday’s passage several times.
Make initial notes: themes, phrases, questions.
Pray for God’s wisdom and transformation.
Great preaching starts long before Sunday. It begins with listening.

The first and last 2 or 3 minutes of your sermon are vital.

Here are 12 simple techniques for strengthening the beginning and end of your message to make your preaching impossible to ignore or forget. 1/ Make attention and need the goal for your introduction.

However you choose to accomplish it, your goal at the beginning of the message is to capture your listener’s attention and to show how the biblical message answers a need, hurt, problem, or question in their lives.

Navigating Congregational Expectations: A Guide for Pastors

Pastors face the challenge of meeting diverse and often unforeseen expectations from their congregations. Here are four guiding questions I've found invaluable over my 30+ years in ministry. 2/What Do I Do?

Understand your calling and ministry vision.

Focus on what God has uniquely equipped you to accomplish. For me, it's praying, studying, preaching God’s Word, and leading our church's mission. Knowing your primary calling clarifies where your focus should lie.

I've spent THOUSANDS of hours preaching and teaching preaching.

Here are 9 simple strategies to make your sermon delivery more dynamic (that you can start applying this week)... 1/ Maximize eye contact

By far the most important non-verbal element. It communicates:

• Sincerity
• A desire to connect
• Accountability

Maximize your eye content by minimizing your notes and making a point to look up. The audience will look at you if you look at them.

Over the last 30 years in ministry, I've read countless books on preaching. These 5 have helped me tremendously (and you can get all of them for less than $100!)... 1/ The Twelve Essential Skills for Great Preaching by Wayne McDill

No book has been more influential on my preaching than this one. He presents a skills-based approach for preparing expositional messages. It's only $15 on Lifeway!

One of the most valuable preaching skills:

Preaching Christ from Old Testament passages.

Master it and you'll see a deeper faith in your congregation.

These 5 questions will get you started: 1/ What is God’s activity in this passage?

With OT narratives, don't focus primarily on what Joseph, Moses, David, or others are doing. That approach can lead to a moralistic message focused on the good or bad example of a Bible character.

Instead, look for what God is doing.

Most people think learning how to speak in public effectively takes 10,000 hours. But I can explain it to you in 30 seconds: 1. Have one dominating idea.

A speech about 20 things is a speech about nothing.

You aren’t ready to make a speech until you can state, in a short, simple sentence between 8 to 12 words, what your speech is about.