How much time should we pastors spend preparing a sermon? Recently I watched a video where a famous pastor answered that question. His response, “I study and read all the time and it takes me about one to two hours to put a sermon together.” Yikes! When I heard that, I felt guilty because there’s no way I can do sermon prep that quickly. I’m sure this pastor’s heart was right, but I wish he had qualified himself more. I doubt very many of us are that speedy. Here are some thoughts on sermon prep time
In Haddon Robinson’s book Biblical Sermons, he wrote that experienced preachers he surveyed spent an average of 16 hours in sermon prep. That sounds more like it to me. That’s probably my average and I’ve been preaching for 25 years.
How Much Time Should You Spend on Sermon Prep?
It depends on…
- how long you’ve been in ministry. If you been in ministry several years, you have a backlog of study material. If you haven’t you will probably need to set aside more study time. I did in my early ministry years.
- how well you’ve catalogued your previous study notes, sermons and materials.
- how well you manage your time.
- what’s happening around you…sometimes unexpected family and ministry demands arise that require our time that we otherwise would have spent on sermon prep. No need to wallow in guilt when that happens.
- your personality…some pastors have the gift of gab and can ‘make up stuff on the fly,’ some of us don’t; some personalities require the preacher to process what he wants to say more thoroughly.
