Posted on by Dave Miers

15 hour, 4-Part Sermon Prep Outline – Justin Buzzard

Justin Buzzard has just posted a really useful booklet outlining his sermon prep process. John Chapman, Australian evangelist, has a really simple method for sermon prep. Justin’s process is very similar to Chappo’s. That’s a good thing! If you’re new(ish) to preaching, or always looking to learn from others, DOWNLOAD the booklet now. You might also be interested in seeing the preaching notes of some well known preachers.

Here’s a snippet about Justin’s process:

This process is what works well for me. I’ve found that I work best approaching sermon prep in 4 “Parts” which I refer to as Till, Seed, Germinate, Reap (the gardening metaphor helps me approach sermon prep as a creation process where God is the primary Creator/Preacher).  I’ve also found that, for me, 15 hours is a sufficient and sustainable amount of time for weekly message prep.

Read the rest of the post | Download PDF

16 Replies to “15 hour, 4-Part Sermon Prep Outline – Justin Buzzard”

  1. Love any resource that helps people get better at preaching, so I’ve downloaded.

    I’d be keen to know how many people have 15 hours a week available for sermon prep.

    Thoughts from the preachers out there??

    S

  2. 15 hours – no!!

    i like 8 hours. sometimes i don’t get that.

    how long do you take scott? do you do it on one day or over two? how far ahead do you work?

  3. I tend to work within the week – my prep ends up being an hour here, 30 mins there, 2 hours over there.

    Where the real formative stuff happens though is when I’m not at the desk, but in the car, or sitting down for a coffee, or lying awake at night or chatting with people, when I’m thinking through application and the packaging. A lot of that is thinking through application and then framing that as an opening question.

    Once I’ve nailed the opening question, I work on a skeleton, then spend probably a 2 hour chunk where I just block everything out and write.

    That said, I’ve never kept an eye on how many hours all up I’ve spent on a sermon. Some passages are easier than others!

  4. hey matt.
    i concur with your formative stuff happening when in car etc.
    mowing the lawn is good too!

    sometimes, if i’ve done lots of thinking earlier in the week – the actual time it takes to write isn’t long because lots has already been happening in my head.

  6. hey matt – you got an electronic version of cookie’s pyramid?

    with the one you use – did you modify? or someone else?
    how is it different?

    peaceout

  7. I found that for me, Cookies pyramid was great when I was a couple of years in – gave me a good structure to work from.

    I’ve added to it in my mind, and I’ve chopped out a bit as well.

    I think that the pyramid doesn’t give a heap of time to grappling with the context – particularly who it was written to and what their issue was. I’ve found that studying the introductions to commentaries, and books like Intro to the new testament (carson, moo and morris) to be a goldmine for getting my head around this, and a gold mine for application.

    I do a little bit of the movements in the passage, but I tend to not re-write the whole thing in my own words.

    The Dominant Picture bit is helpful, but the bit I really use a lot is the top end of the pyramid; the subject, compliment, big idea and big question.

    And I’ve ended up not using cookies application stuff at all, because I’ve usually worked a lot of that out when I’m thinking about the context.

  10. The goldmine of the pryamid is the big idea, big question and dominant picture – this is stuff which can be found in ‘Biblical Preaching’ by Haddon Robinson.

    My mods to it are:

    I distinguish between the passage structure & the talk structure – they are not always the same for me

    I add a few checks: how will this preach to the head? and heart? how will I make this talk Jesus centred? what objections will unbelievers have?

    I also have a notes section where I fill out loads of different ideas – lots from context at Matt Jacobs was mentioning above! And I ask a lot of questions in there.

    I have an illustration section to note down any that come to mind in my preparation.

    I have this as a Word template.

    @Matt acobs. The good thing about Cookies application is it gets you to think about the impossible application – I often find this speaks more to the unbeliever! And helps me to avoid misapplying the passage!

  12. @Matt Sparks; cool. I used the application bit for a while at first but it just didn’t work for me.

    What I have started doing more of is thinking through how this passage informed and transformed the original listeners. I then go looking for parallels between us and them, and focus my big idea on that information/transformation thing. So for example a talk on Colossians 1 is not just about the Supremacy of Jesus as a theological idea, it’s more about being confident that our faith is in Jesus-the Supreme Son of God-and how this helps us face of opposition.

  14. thanks for all these comments.
    it’s been good reading what you’ve all had to say.

    thanks scott for re-sparking this blog post.

    peaceout

  15. Pingback: DMDC – Best of 2010 | dave miers dot com

Comments are closed.