The following article is part of a series of articles that seeks to offer practical advice to preachers. Each article will contain advice from seasoned preachers pertaining to all matters of pulpit ministry.

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I was first captivated by preaching when I heard Adrian Rogers preaching on the radio when I was a kid. The way he handled the text sequentially matched with the fervency of his delivery hooked me on expository preaching. I preached my first sermon at age 15, and I’ve been preaching weekly since I was 18, nearly 20 years now. I love preaching. I love everything about it. From planning to preparation to delivery, every part of the process is something I feel privileged to get to do each and every week. I am, down to my bones, a preacher.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. But I’ve also learned a few things as well. Here are a few bits of practical advice I’ve learned over the years and wish someone had told me earlier in my pulpit ministry. There’s nothing sacred here, but hopefully it will be helpful as you do the work of preaching the Word.

1. Pray more than you are

It know it can sound cliché to say that prayer is critical to preaching, but I have at times allowed the seeming triteness of that statement to keep me from praying like I should. I need to pray for insight into the deep truths of the biblical text. I need to pray through the text in terms of its application to my life. I need to ask God to run the application of the text through me on its way to the congregation so that I’ve already been confronted, convicted, and hopefully obedient to the demands of the text before I preach it. Pray before your sermon preparation. Pray while you’re studying the text. Pray before you walk into the pulpit. Pray as you deliver the message. Pray once you’re finished that God will use his Word. Pray, pray, pray.

2. Study the text with diligence

Don’t cut corners in your preparation. Study the text. Read over it again and again like you’re pouring over a love letter. Do your best to translate it yourself and use several good modern translations as well. Read what others have said about the text throughout church history. Invite the best scholars in the world to your desk by purchasing the best commentaries available. Check your work. Pursue the answers to all your interpretative questions. Don’t leave any interpretive rock unturned. Your preparation will make your preaching go further than it could otherwise. Painstaking study pays great dividends in your ministry.

3. Plan ahead and finish early

There’s nothing worse than starting the week having no idea what you’re going to be preaching on Sunday. You need to have some idea what you are going to be preaching at least several weeks ahead of time. This will require advanced planning. I always begin my planning my preaching by examining a book of the Bible and dividing it into “preachable units.” Then I have an idea of what text I’ll be preaching on any given Sunday for the next few weeks. I also try to work about a week and half ahead on the text so that I’m not scrambling in my preparation every week. My goal is to finish my sermon early, usually by the Wednesday of the week I plan to preach that text. Not only does this reduce the stress and burden of weekly preaching, but it allows me to have a few days to refine the sermon, make necessary edits, and “live with it” for a few days so that the message can get from my head down into my heart.

4. Write a manuscript to clarify your thoughts but then use it as little as possible in delivery.

Writing a sermon manuscript will allow you to think through your message clearly. You can craft how you want your introduction, main points, illustrative material, etc., to sound. I usually preach the sermon out loud in my study and then write it down as I go so that it sounds how I speak rather than how I write. This process allows me to clarify my thoughts and put them on paper where I can edit and sharpen what I intend to say. Once the manuscript is written, I work through it half a dozen times before Sunday so that I can have the message stamped on my heart so when I’m in the pulpit I’m not tied down to my notes. Making eye contact and having the freedom to move out from behind the pulpit allows me to have a better delivery and connection with my congregation.

5. Listen to good preaching

It is helpful to listen to good preaching each week. This will do a couple of things for you. First, it will nourish your own soul. I am a preacher, but I am also a member of the flock. And as a member of the flock, I need to be fed spiritually just as much as my church members do. Second, it will help you learn how to preach better. I try to glean as much as I can from all sorts of public communicators, such as politicians and comedians, but there’s nothing like watching a great preacher model how to do it to sharpen my own preaching.

6. Work out

It doesn’t sound spiritual, but the Scriptures do say there is profit to bodily exercise (1 Tim 4:8). Preaching is an embodied act, so it is wise to steward the body God has entrusted to you. There are several benefits to this. You will feel better. You will tire out less easily. It will reduce stress. The blood flow to your brain will help spark creative thinking. And you will have greater endurance. I preach three times back-to-back-to-back each Sunday morning. It’s a work-out! Having a regular routine of physical exercise helps.

7. Take a Sabbath

Few things will keep your body, mind, and spirit more refreshed than the regular practice of weekly Sabbath. I need one day a week to take a mental break from thinking about and working on the sermon. I believe the mind will subconsciously continue to work on it, but taking one day a week to set it aside and invest my time in my relationship with the Lord, with my family, with my friends, and enjoying nature, hobbies, and other things that refresh me, gives life to my soul and allows me to preach from a place of joy and energy rather than exhaustion or burnout.

8. Turn off the screens and go to bed early on Saturdays 

One of the best things you can do before Sunday is to have a quiet evening the night before. I rarely if ever take any church-related appointments or dinner engagements on Saturday night. I want to focus my heart and mind on what’s to come on Sunday. My family turns off the screens, eats dinner together and shares a family devotional, gets everything ready for the morning, and then heads to bed early so that we are ready to go for Sunday. This will help you get focused and prepared.

9. Read widely

You should read something every day. You should read all kinds of literature. This will help you stay well-rounded as a human as well as a thinker and preacher. I generally have several books going at the same time. I always try to be reading a work of theology, a book related to ministry, preaching, or leadership, a historical biography, and a book for pure enjoyment that is unrelated to ministry. Good preachers are good readers.

10. Find your own voice

Early on in your preaching ministry, you are going to tend to sound like the preachers who have influenced you. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you will be more effective when you preach as yourself and find your own voice. Be you, authentically. Your congregation doesn’t need you to be Billy Graham or John Piper or Tim Keller. If Philip Brooks is right when he says that preaching is truth communicated through personality, then there’s no better way to preach than to allow God’s voice to come through your personality, just as he created you to be.

11. Review your delivery

This is my least favorite thing to do each week, but it is really important: every week I listen to myself preach. It’s brutal. I’m my own worst critic. I can tell you every flaw in my delivery. You may not know that you have some weird physical tick when you speak or some obnoxious verbal habit (“Uh, Um, You know, You tracking with that,” etc.), but if you watch yourself preach, you’ll begin to catch the distracting things you say or do in the pulpit. Once you catch yourself doing these things, you can be more intentional about correcting them so that your delivery is more effective.

12. Ask for help

We all get stuck in our preaching. We go through dry seasons or deal with difficult texts that we are unsure how to preach or we get stuck in a rut. Don’t feel embarrassed to ask someone to help you. You can ask staff members, congregants, or friends to watch you preach and give you advice and feedback for how you can improve. You can ask fellow preachers to form a “brain trust” where you can bat around ideas about texts and sermons. There are great seminary classes you can take, conferences you can attend, and experts you can ask to sharpen your craft.

13. Be kind to yourself

Andrew Peterson reminds us all that we need to be kind to ourselves. Give yourself some grace. Don’t beat yourself up on Monday when Sunday’s sermon bombed. Every preacher preaches duds. We are all bad preachers at times. If you fall off the horse, dust yourself off, and get back up there!

14. Trust the Spirit to do the work thru the Word

When you’ve done all you can do to pray, prepare, and preach well, trust that at the end of the day the effectiveness of the ministry of the Word is not all up to you. God’s people are shaped into the image of God’s Son as God’s Spirit uses God’s Word. And God’s Word will not return void (Isaiah 55:11)—even if your sermon was a dud! Rest in that.

15. Don’t quit

Every preacher I know has been tempted to quit the ministry at different points in time. Don’t quit. If God has called you to the ministry of the Word, stick to it through the mountain top moments and the valleys. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve had seasons of great joy in the pulpit and seasons where I felt like I couldn’t preach my way out of a wet paper sack. I’ve had wonderful days in ministry and deeply discouraging days. If you don’t feel like you are moving upward, and you feel like you are maybe even moving downward, at least keep moving forward. Ministry, and discipleship, is what Eugene Peterson called, “a long obedience in the same direction.” Galatians 6:9 gives a promise: “Do not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not give up.”

Keep your hand to the plow, preacher!

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Andrew Hébert serves as the Lead Pastor of Mobberly Baptist Church in Longview, Texas.