It is sometimes said that one should spend one hour in preparation for every minute one intends to speak. To my mind, this is not very helpful advice. If you are a free church pastor who might preach three forty minute sermons a week, it will be quite impossible. Some people say that it takes them longer to prepare a good ten minute sermon than an average twenty minute one. I can well imagine that is true if one wants to be clear, concise, engaging and true to the text. It takes some time to work out what can be left out. So I suggest forgetting about time per minute.
The true answer is it all depends.
How long do you have?! What else have you got to do?
How well do you know your text?
Your hearers?
Have you preached on this passage many times before?
How are your languages?
Are you an able speaker?
Does the text touch on doctrines, or history, or pastoral or apologetic problems you have to do lots of work on?
How is your praying?
If you are generally very well prepared and experienced, you may be able to get away with very little preparation on some passages or texts. This might be a good or a bad thing!
You might say you have always been preparing your sermon for a lifetime! True enough. But you should I think spend at least some specific time in preparation.
I have heard it said that people like an off the cuff sermon from time to time. Or that Father So and So always used to prepare his sermon walking from the Rectory to the church. Whether it was ten miles or twenty yards is not always disclosed. But frankly, if this is your regular pattern, I think it is disgraceful negligence. The public preaching of the Word is (along with prayer and administration of the sacraments and... and... and...) one of the most important things any minister, any human being, can do and I think it demands some deliberate and specific dedicated effort and thought from you. And more than ten minutes!
You should spend enough time in preparation to do an acceptable job. You want to say something true and useful about the good news of Jesus Christ from this text. And once you know what that is, you should try to force yourself to do a bit more work to make your sermon more than adequate. I find this last 10 or 20% the hardest for me, but it is wise if at all possible to not settle for good enough if one has the ability and capacity to make the sermon better. Eventually the law of diminishing returns might cause you to stop before you have Yhe Perfect Sermon, but could you relatively easily add value to "that will do"?
My advice would be: begin your preparation (even if only slightly) as early as you can. Read Sunday's text a few times on Monday. (And for goodness sake decide what the text is going to be so that you have some time to actually prepare not wonder what to preach on!) These first readings may give you an idea as to whether you will need more time or less in the study this week. Have a look at your diary and have an idea when that might be. Of course your week may have to change, but you should plan some time to prepare. You may even feel you need to track down some extra study material on some particular question. If you don't start your sermon preparation until Thursday, that might not be possible.
You might do a fair bit of preparation while you walk the dog or wash the dishes or drive the car but I really think it will also help you to apply your bottom to your chair and get out a pen and paper or a laptop.
I recommend spending at least two main sessions in sermon preparation. By the end of session one (which might be, say, a morning or an afternoon), try to have a sense of how you will preach the passage: what is the main thrust of the sermon going to be? After this four hours work, where are you in terms of a theme / aim sentence and any kind of points or structure?
There is great value in sleeping on it and maybe consciously or unconsciously mulling over the sermon / allowing it to mature.
Much of session two can then be spent refining your outline and working on how to say it etc. What will your introduction and conclusion be? Are there any main illustrations? Things to explain carefully? Objections to anticipate? Applications?
Some people also swear by some time on Saturday night or Sunday morning spent on the sermon. If you are going to preach some from memory, this may be a help. Or you may be one of those people for whom a bit of adrenaline and a deadline might do wonders. It doesn't say in the Bible that it is necessarily sinful or foolish to spend 6am - 10am on a Sunday working on your sermon, but for myself I'm not sure that would be an ideal regular pattern - not least as we have a service at 9:30am.
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