When I look back now at some of my early sermons, I’m embarrassed at how unorganized and all over the place they were.
I didn’t have much of a sermon-writing process back then. I’d study a text, pray, study some more, read a stack of commentaries, pray some more, and eventually start writing. My head was full of content and my heart was full of hope, and somehow I’d end up with a sermon manuscript. Not a very clear one. Probably too long, too many ideas, and probably not very good.
Thank goodness I got some training on preaching and realized how important it is to establish a clear sermon structure as a preacher. It matters for both the preacher and the listener. It improves the preacher’s writing process, giving you clarity and direction as you develop the sermon. And it helps the listener follow along and stay engaged.
1. Structure Helps You Preach Clearly
Clarity is the whole game in preaching right now. People aren’t short on voices telling them what to think. The people sitting in our churches are bombarded with content week in and week out. Podcasts, social media reels, and YouTubers are dousing them with content all week long. Most of this is like junk food to the heart and mind. When they show up on Sunday, they are hungry for substance – for truth. So, it’s important that we give it to them clearly, in a way they can catch.
Too many sermons are delivered as run-on content, without clear movement, lacking a discernible structure that the listener can’t organize. If someone wanted to take notes, they’d struggle. The sermon you spent so much time on goes out like a handful of sand. Have you ever tried to catch a handful of sand? It’s impossible; grains of sand spray everywhere. So many of my early sermons were like this. Lots of good ideas and truths, but no cohesive structure holding it together.
A solid sermon structure allows you to step into the pulpit and deliver something the congregation can actually catch; something tightly held together — like a baseball. Structure helps you throw a strike when you preach, not a handful of sand.
Tim Keller used to say, “I don’t mind if you take notes at the beginning of a message, but if you’re still taking notes at the end, I feel like I haven’t brought it home.” He was echoing his own mentor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who put it this way: “There ought to come a time in every message where the pen goes down and the eyes go up and you stop saying, ‘Oh my God, look at all the things I have to do for you.’ And you start saying, ‘Oh my God, look at all the things you’ve done for me.’”
Both men were describing the same moment. A sermon that moves beyond the notepad (the head) and pierces the heart with the good news of grace.
But don’t misread these excellent preachers. They aren’t saying they don’t want people to take notes. This is not a license to ditch structure. Both Keller and MLJ preached in a way that made note-taking easy. If you listen to enough Keller sermons, you’ll notice he had an unmistakably clear structure, often three points, named right up front. He worked through those points with real clarity and crisp transitions. The heart-moment wasn’t instead of structure; it happened because of it.
You should preach in a way that makes people want to take notes. Give them clear moves to follow and something worth writing down. And if you happen to reach the heart along the way and the pen goes down – excellent! Very few of us are gifted enough orators to preach week in and week out without a clear structure holding the sermon together.
2. Structure Helps Them Listen Well
Attention spans are shrinking, and it’s not just a feeling. Researcher Gloria Mark at UC Irvine has tracked how long people stay on one screen before switching. In 2004, it was two and a half minutes. Today it’s about 47 seconds. That’s the water our congregations are swimming in all week before they sit down in front of you on Sunday. 47-second attention spans. Lord, help us.
Lifeway Research has found that 45% of churchgoers want sermons 30 minutes or shorter, and 70% want them capped at 40 minutes. More than a quarter say their pastor typically preaches longer than they’d prefer. I don’t think that most Christians actually want less preaching; I think they want fewer rabbit trails, less unhelpful commentary, and fewer moments where a sermon feels a bit lost. They want preaching they can follow.
A clear structure is one of the best tools you have in this 47-second-attention-span world. Listeners learn your structure over time, and they start to anticipate it. That’s not a bad thing. It’s exactly what helps them stay engaged and follow along.
Structure doesn’t mean boring. It’s just good pedagogy. Please don’t mishear me; I’m not telling you to preach structure. I’m telling you to preach the text, to the heart, into the culture, with a structure underneath it. Think of it like a skeleton that holds together the flesh and blood of the sermon. People shouldn’t be staring at the skeleton. But they should be able to feel that it’s there, holding the sermon together so that people can catch it.
A Skeleton to Borrow
Here’s the actual skeleton I use most weeks when I sit down to write.
I start with the title and text up front, followed by a short introduction with an image or idea that earns the room’s attention. Every week, I state a proposition or a probing question that serves as an anchor point for the sermon. Then a prayer to hand the whole thing to God before I ask anyone to receive it. I usually organize the sermon body into three headings, each one moving through the same rhythm: Scripture, commentary, point, application, transition. Finally, the gospel, clearly given to show how Jesus is the answer, the provision, the fulfillment of whatever the text has been building toward. And a closing call and invitation that actually asks something of the people listening.
You don’t have to preach exactly like I do. In fact, I hope you don’t. But if my structure helps you, steal this skeleton. Adjust it. Throw out what doesn’t fit you and make it yours. But get one. Your congregation doesn’t need sermons they can’t catch. Stop throwing sand. They need sermons they can track, movement by movement, all the way to Jesus.
If you’re a pastor or planter wanting to talk through your own preaching process, I’d love to talk it through. Reach out here.
