How to write a sermon when you have run out of week
The week did what weeks do. A hospital visit, a funeral, a board meeting that ran long, and now the sermon is not written and Sunday is not moving. This is a way to write it in the hours you actually have. It will not be your best sermon of the year. It will be a true one, in your voice, and you will not be ashamed of it.
First, decide what you are not going to do
A short week is lost more often to ambition than to laziness. The pastor with six hours tries to write the sermon they would have written with twenty, and ends up with four pages of notes and no sermon. So before you open anything, cut.
- You are not going to read three commentaries. You are going to read the passage, slowly, several times, and one commentary if you have one you trust. That is enough.
- You are not going to find the perfect illustration. You are going to use one thing that happened to you or to someone in your church, told plainly.
- You are not going to cover the whole passage. You are going to preach the one thing in it that grabbed you, and say so out loud.
- You are not going to write a manuscript from scratch. You are going to write an outline with full sentences at the joints, then decide whether you need more.
None of that is cheating. Every one of those is a decision a careful preacher makes on a normal week, quietly. You are just making them all at once.
The plan, and roughly how long each part takes
These add up to about three hours of focused work. If you have more time, stretch the reading and the editing. If you have less, keep every step and shrink each one. Do not skip the last step.
- Read the passage aloud, twice. (15 minutes) Aloud matters. Your ear catches what your eye slides past: a repeated word, a turn in the argument, a line that lands harder than the rest. Read it once in the translation you preach from and once in another. Write down, by hand, the one line or moment that caught you. Do not explain it yet.
- Ask the passage two questions. (20 minutes) What is this text saying about God? And what is it asking of the people it was written to? Answer each in one plain sentence, in the words you would use across a kitchen table. If you cannot, read it aloud again. If you have one trusted commentary, this is the moment to open it, to check your answers, not to replace them.
- Write the one sentence. (15 minutes) One sentence, in your own words, that says what this sermon is for. Not a summary of the passage. The thing you want the congregation to know or do when they leave. Say it out loud. If it sounds like a commentary heading, rewrite it until it sounds like you. This sentence is the sermon. Everything else serves it.
- Choose three moves. (20 minutes) Not three points, three moves: where the sermon goes, in order, to get people from where they are sitting to the one sentence. The plainest shape that works on a short week is: here is what the passage says, here is where it presses on us, here is what God does about it. Write each move as a full sentence. Under each, note which verses carry it.
- Find the one true illustration. (15 minutes) Something from your own week, or your own church, or your own life, that shows one of the three moves. Not a story from a book of illustrations. The congregation can tell the difference, and on a short week you do not have time to make a borrowed story your own. If it is about a person in the church, ask them first or change enough that they are not recognizable.
- Write the landing. (15 minutes) The last two or three minutes of the sermon, written out in full. The landing is where tired sermons fall apart, so write it while you still have some energy. Say the one sentence again, in slightly different words. Tell them what to do with it this week, once, specifically. Then stop. Do not add a second ending.
- Write straight through, once. (45 to 60 minutes) Now, and only now, write from the top. Do not stop to fix anything. Do not look anything up. If you hit a gap, write "more here" and keep going. Write it the way you would say it, with the sentences you actually use in the pulpit. You are not producing a document, you are producing something to preach from. If your outline with full sentences at the joints already reads like a sermon, you may be done with this step in twenty minutes.
- Edit for the ear. (30 minutes) Read the whole thing aloud, with a pen. Cut every sentence that explains something you already said. Cut every "as we know." Check every Bible reference you quoted against the text, because a tired preacher misremembers, and a misquoted verse is the one thing the careful listener will remember. Mark where you will slow down. Then leave it alone.
Do steps 1, 3, 4, 6 and 8. Read aloud, write the one sentence, choose three moves, write the landing, edit aloud. Preach from the outline. It will be shorter than usual and that is fine. A twelve-minute sermon that says one true thing is a better gift to your church than a twenty-five-minute one that wanders looking for its point.
What to do about the guilt
Most pastors who write on a short week carry a low hum of shame into the pulpit. It is worth naming, because it leaks into the preaching. You mumble the parts you are unsure of. You over-apologize in the introduction. You add filler to make it feel like it was worth the congregation's time.
Two things are true. The first is that the sermon is not the only thing you did this week for these people. The hospital visit was ministry. The funeral was ministry. The congregation is not owed your best sermon every week; they are owed your faithful presence, and a sermon that tells them the truth from the text. The second is that a short sermon preached with conviction is almost always received better than a long one preached with apology. Say the one sentence like you mean it. You do.
Where a tool can honestly help, and where it cannot
We make sermon prep software, so you should know where we stand. A tool cannot do steps 1 through 3 for you. Reading the passage aloud, asking what it says about God, and writing the one sentence in your own words is the work of a preacher, and it is the work that makes the sermon yours. Skip it and you will be reading someone else's sermon on Sunday, however smoothly it was drafted.
Where a tool can help is the part that eats a short week without adding anything: turning a good outline into a first draft you can edit, and checking that every verse you quoted is actually what the text says. That is what PastorPrep does. It learns how you preach from sermons you have already preached, drafts from your outline and your one sentence, and checks every reference against your translation before you see it. You still write the sermon. You just start step 7 from a draft that sounds like you rather than from a blank page, and you spend the saved hour on the edit.
If that sounds useful, there is an offer at the bottom of this page. If it does not, everything above works with a pen.
A short checklist for the pulpit
- Is the one sentence written at the top of the page, so you can find it when you lose your place?
- Is every quoted verse checked against the translation you are holding?
- Is the landing written out in full?
- Have you cut the apology from the introduction?
- Is there one illustration, and is it true?
Five yeses and you are ready. Go to bed.
Out of week right now? Send us the passage.
Tell us what you are preaching this Sunday and where you are stuck. Within 24 hours you will have an outline back, drafted by PastorPrep, in your own voice if you send two past sermons along with it. Vivian reads every request herself. Free, no account, no card, whether or not you ever pay us.
And when you have a normal week
PastorPrep keeps your main idea and outline word for word, drafts as much of the sermon as you ask it to, and checks every verse against your translation. $19 a month, one price. There is a 14-day free trial that starts when you write something, and no card to start. Start free, or see how it works.