The Anatomy of a Message

I mentioned on Sunday that I was feeling a bit burned out and somebody joked with me afterwards (and by the way, not the first time I’ve heard this), “How come your so tired?  Don’t pastors only work 1 hour per week?”  Now I knew this person was joking but I thought maybe you’d like a glimpse into a “normal” week.

First, there is no “normal” week.  As much as I try to have a routine, the truth is pastoring is not something you can fit in nicely from 9-5.  Also, because I’m so passionate about what I do, I’m constantly thinking about church.  Even when watching TV or driving down the road, I’m looking at things or listening to things through the lens of how can this be used to further God’s Kingdom.

Second, my ministry involves much more than just sermon prep.  From being the de facto leader of the worship team to creating videos to being the staff’s IT department to meetings with staff, council, ministry leaders and others, the week fills up pretty fast.  About 60%-70% of my time goes into thinking about and planning for Sunday’s at the rest goes to the myriad of other things I’m responsible for or volunteer for.

With that said though…here’s what I typically try to accomplish sermon wise each week:

Monday:  I’m usually months ahead in at least ideas for sermons and series.  For example, right now I have a pretty good idea of what each Sunday will look like up through the end of May.  This means that when things are going good, I’m actually praying, studying for, researching and writing sermons a few weeks in advance of when they will actually be presented.  So Monday’s are the day that I pull out the message for the up-coming week, review what I’ve previously written, add or change it and basically shape it 95% into what it will look like by the end of the week.

Tuesday:  Final tweaks to that week’s message and then I choose what are the key points that I want to highlight on the insert as well as choose the life application questions.  At some point during the day the message will be printed out and I’ll read through it.

Wednesday:  Another read through of that week’s message and then I’ll get busy preparing and writing for future weeks.  Typically I’ll type everything out word for word the way I want to say it.  Then even though it’s rough I’ll verbally say it out loud, allowing the Holy Spirit to make course corrections.  I will then add these additions or subtractions to the outline and repeat the process again.  By now the draft is a pretty good mix of my thoughts, the thoughts of others and what the Holy Spirit spoke to me not only in the run throughs but in the days and weeks leading up to this writing.  In other words, right now I know the general direction I’m going with my Easter message and so for the next month I’ll be filtering everything that happens to me or that I see through the “could that somehow tie into that message.”  Now multiply that thought process for every message from now through the end of May and you can see why my brain is always thinking.

Thursday:  Sort of a light day sermon wise.  If I have some extra time I will either start on Friday’s work or continue Wednesday’s.

Friday:  By now through the writing, the run throughs, the Monday and Tuesday tweaking and read throughs, the message for the week is sort of a part of me.  I will now take it from a fully written out transcript and condense it down to just the main thoughts that can keep me on track in presenting it.  Once this is done I will print this “cheat sheet” and verbally run through the message to make sure I didn’t leave anything out or think my memory was better than it is.  Any areas I struggled with I will work on until it’s committed to memory. This is all done before noon.  From Friday noon until Saturday noon, I try to have my day of rest.

Saturday:  I will at least twice more verbally go through the message trying to commit as much of it as possible to memory.  The final run through is usually somewhere between 10:30-11:30PM…then I go to bed…I want the message to be the last thing I’m thinking of as I go to sleep.

Sunday:  Guess what the first thing is I’m thinking about when I wake up…yep…sometimes I’m actually running through it in my mind as I consciously awaken.  As I shower I continue reviewing in my mind the main points, then afterwards I review any problem spots.  During my devotions I pray for me and for you and then I don’t think about the message again until it’s actually being delivered.  The tech people have the full blown written transcript of what I’ll be saying and usually I’m pretty close to it and occasionally I’ll veer off if the Spirit is leading me to say something else….that’s rare though…I’m of the opinion that the Spirit can speak just as well to me in the months leading up to the message as He can in the moment.  The problem with in the moment is, am I sure it was the voice of the Spirit or just my own good thought.  So unless I know that I know that I know that God is speaking to me to say something else, I just trust that He already gave me everything in all the prep time that went in.

So there you have it…the anatomy of a sermon…once it’s done…only 168 hours until I have to do it again.