Preaching Nuts & Bolts: Conquer Sermon Prep, Save Time, and Write Better Messages

by Brandon Hilgemann

Preaching is hard work. When I first felt called to ministry, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had never preached a sermon in my life. I never had a mentor walk me through the process. In fact, I was scared to death of public speaking. So I argued with God. I begged Him to let me do anything but preach. The thought of having to preach in front of a crowd every single week terrified me. But God didn’t relent. I went to a Bible college. I thought, “Surely, Bible college will teach me how to preach!” I applied myself. I graduated with honors with a ministry degree. But sadly, I was only forced to preach two times in the entire four years I was there. Since I was scared, I didn’t go out of my way to seek preaching opportunities like I should have. Suddenly, I found myself in my first job as a youth pastor. I immediately had to preach at least once a week. PANIC! Bible college did not prepare me for this. What should I do? My first attempts at sermons (if you could even call it that) were horrendous. I stood in front of my notes, shaking while reading the message word for word. This is not what I got into ministry to do! I needed to get better. So I hit the books. I read every book on preaching I could get my hands on. The books were alright but mostly theoretical. So I asked a lot of pastors a lot of questions and started listening to as many good preachers as I could find. Finally, I started getting some practical advice. Slowly, I began to get better with each message. This little book is the kind of resource I wish I had way back when I felt the call to ministry. There were good books on preaching, but most lacked the practical tips I needed. I knew why I preached and what to preach. What I didn’t know was how to preach. I needed short, practical tips to get me started in the right direction. Writing a sermon is not as complicated as it may seem. My hope is that this book will save you from the same panic attacks I had. However, if you are a well-seasoned preacher, don’t think this book isn’t for you. It never hurts to get back to the basics. Writing this book has been just as helpful for me, reminding me of areas I, myself, have strayed from. In this book, you will learn how to master sermon prep, save time, write better messages, build an amazing illustration database, and more. Thanks for investing the time to read this. Your preaching will be better for it.

136 pages, Paperback

Published May 17, 2016

Reviews

[Camilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot og good tips here that I think I might find useful even though this book was not written for me. This book is written for people preaching in a ministry on a weekly basis. If you are like me, in that you only preach once in a while, you can skip the last part of this book. However I found the seven steps to be useful and worth a shot.

With that said, I got annoyed too many times because of typos. One or two is fine (well, actually no), but there are many in this book and it makes the reading process slower and less smooth because you need to reread the sentence to really get the meaning. Which is something I find extremely annoying when I am in a reading flow. It made me think that the book was written in a hurry or not edited properly.

Nevertheless I think this book may be of some assistance and help in preparing a sermon. I will keep it and I will probably reference it again when in need of some preaching preparation tips.

[Josh Sorensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are looking for a super practical, step by step walk through of developing a sermon in all its parts, this is a fantastic resource. It does not so much go in depth in terms of how to exegete the passage (there are other great resources to help with that), but in terms of crafting a message, every preacher would benefit from this.

Even if one or two points jump off the page, you are that much of a better preacher as a result.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Has some very useful ideas and tools, however it also comes with a misunderstanding about the nature of preaching which influences the recommendations that ultimately detract from the biblical nature suggested.