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The Process of Preaching

The Process of Preaching

Last updated on: August 3, 2026 at 10:35 am by Layne Wallace

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The Process of Preaching 2026-08-03T10:35:00-04:00 Layne Wallace

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The Process of Preaching

Since 1993, give or take, I have either been preparing to be a pastor or serving in that role. I really do not want to do the math on how many years that is, but it is more than half my life. Ordained in 1999, I have served as a pastor ever since. For some pastors, preaching is the chore. It overwhelms them with dread and sucks up their mental energy. Not me. Preaching is life. That is not to say it is easy. It is, however, my greatest professional joy. In the next few columns, I’m going to describe the process of preaching. For those who are hearers of sermons, I think this will give you some insight into what goes into preaching and may help you listen better.

Stage Fright

The first issue many preachers face is stage fright. I still recall being a young preacher. A bit terrified of preaching, I would go into an empty room in my house on Saturday nights and practice the sermon multiple times. I wanted to ensure I had the sermon mostly memorized before Sunday morning. That practice did nothing for my nerves, however. I was terrified.

I think terror of preaching is a good thing, but most of the terror we ministers have is about the wrong issue. We are terrified that we will give a bad sermon and that people will not like it. Worse, we are afraid that people will not like us. Envisioning an implosion like Dan Quayle after Lloyd Benson’s famous quip, “ … you are no Jack Kennedy …” we live in nausea-inducing dread.

Fearing the Wrong Thing

Most often, the dread is about the reception of the sermon, and that is a problem. What we should dread is loaded into the concept of preaching. We stand before the people of God to proclaim the word of God, in the presence of God. We speak on behalf of God. If that does not cause at least some terror, we have misunderstood the assignment. Yes, there should be some dread in preaching, but what we should dread is misrepresenting God.

Topics for Preaching

When people ask me how I decide what to preach about, the answer is always the same. I preach what the Bible says. For me, the process is longer than most. I will choose texts and create tentative titles for the year, usually in the summer or fall. I find this process to be helpful as it gives weeks, if not months, to be able to think about the texts. As I read the news, read theological texts, Biblical texts, or even doomscroll social media, I will often come across something that will be connected to a text I have in view for the coming weeks.

I know that some like to go week to week for planning to be open to the Spirit. For me, however, I think the Spirit is just as much at work weeks ahead of time as He is during the week immediately preceding the sermon.

Choosing Texts

Make no mistake, the single most important choice the pastor makes is text selection. Choosing the wrong text for the situation guarantees that the wrong sermon will be preached. Some weeks ago, my congregation was going through an extensive period of difficulty. We had several of our dear members going through extreme physical crises. We were deeply concerned and grieving. In my planning, I had envisioned a sermon challenging our congregation to engage in the task of evangelism. I looked at the text from Matt 9, and knew it was absolutely the wrong choice for the week. So, in prayerful consideration, I chose to change the text to Isaiah 43, reminding the congregation of God’s claim and care for his people. “… I have called you by name, and you are mine…” “…I will be with you…”

Matt 9 is a great text. Evangelism is a vital topic. They both would have been wrong on that date.

Text Selection, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

For those in Mainline traditions* text selection is often simplified. Pastors in these traditions will typically consult the Revised Common Lectionary. The Lectionary is a three-year cycle of readings focusing on Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Each week the Lectionary presents readings. One will be a Gospel reading, the next will be an Epistle reading, a reading from the Old Testament will follow, and completing the set is a reading from the Psalms.

Revised Common Lectionary

There are many advantages in using the Lectionary. The first is that it is Biblical preaching. The pastor will go to the text before making any other decisions. The text generates the sermon rather than the sermon picking the text.

Clergy stole with the cross

For novice preachers, the lectionary is a lifeline. No longer worried about text selection, the pastor can focus energy on studying Scripture and applying it to the congregation.

The lectionary also is intensely focused on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. The Lectionary, connected to the Church Calendar, will not only focus on the events of Holy Week, but it will add events like the Presentation in the Temple, the Baptism of Jesus, the Transfiguration, the Temptation, and the Ascension. Added to that, the Lectionary will add Advent, Lent, Pentecost Sunday, and Trinity Sunday, among others. In short, Lectionary preaching is Christ-Focused.

The other advantage of the Lectionary is that it can yield a breadth of preaching that is quite helpful. When left to our own devices, pastors often rely on familiar texts. We can leave aside texts that are uncomfortable or unfamiliar and not give our congregations the broadest exposure to Scripture.

Problems with the Lectionary

The first problem with the Lectionary is precisely the mirror image of its strength. Pastors using the lectionary often focus on the Gospel reading to the exclusion of the other texts. Rather than expanding the texts the pastor uses for preaching, used in this way, the lectionary becomes very limiting.

The Revised Common Lectionary has a bad habit, too. It tends to soften, even avoid, discussion of God’s wrath. For example, the Lectionary cuts Luke 10:12-15 while including Luke 10:1-10 and 16-20. It omits Matthew 11:20-24 as well.

The Lectionary’s treatment of John is bizarre as well. The Lectionary has a year for Matthew, for Mark, and for Luke. Why not have a year for John? Why privilege the first three Gospels over John? This choice is fundamentally not helpful.

The Lectionary also excludes many important texts. For example, Zechariah 4, “… Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord … ” A minister using the Lectionary’s readings for Sundays solely would never preach this text. The late Presbyterian scholar Elizabeth Achtemeier** notes that a pastor could make a very profitable series of sermons based entirely on omitted texts.

Preaching Straight Through Books

In evangelical traditions, it has become popular to preach straight through Biblical Books. There are some very good reasons to do so. In preaching straight through a book, the congregation gains the sense of the book as a whole, rather than just snippets. By way of comparison, because the Lectionary follows the life of Christ, it will necessarily skip around a bit. Following Christmas, it will focus on the young Jesus and then get to Jesus’ Baptism by the middle of January. So far, so good. Lent, however, usually begins in February. Suddenly, the preacher needs to shift to the end of Jesus’ ministry.

In 2027, the Church Calendar celebrates Jesus’ Baptism on Jan 10th. Ash Wed is Feb 10th. Suddenly, the preacher has gone from the beginning of Jesus’ in Matthew to looking at the events that will lead up to the cross. Missing in this is Matthew’s flow and logic; by sprinkling in John, the Lectionary risks losing much of Matthew’s unique voice.

Calvin famously preached through books.

Preaching straight through books avoids that outcome. One begins to hear the book’s unique outlook and perspective. Matthew is quite concerned to present Jesus as the fulfilment of God’s purposes. For Matthew, Jesus is the new Moses, the great teacher. Matthew also makes a connection to Solomon and paints Jesus as the new Wise One. This is a different focus from Luke, who emphasizes Jesus as the Lord of the Kingdom of God; Mark, who wants to present Jesus as the destroyer of darkness and evil; and John, who wants to emphasize Jesus’ divinity. None of these are contradictory; these are just the emphasis of each Gospel writer.

Preaching through books helps the congregation hear the voice of each writer. Few ways of preaching accomplish this task better.

What Could Go Wrong

There are problems with this approach, however. What happens when something like Father’s Day or Mother’s Day occurs during the middle of a series on Timothy? The pastor is presented with several unhelpful options. He can force the text to say something about family even if the connection is not there, he can ignore the holiday, or he can put off the series for a week.

Another problem is that some concepts need to be preached on their own. If a pastor preaches through books regularly, he can miss preaching on great doctrines like the Trinity because it is composed from multiple texts across multiple books. Preaching what John has to say about the Trinity without noting what Romans has to say about the Trinity yields a misshapen doctrine.

Another example is the doctrine of the return of Christ. The return of Christ is contained in multiple texts that are essential for each other. Reading the apocalyptic material in the Gospels without reading the apocalyptic material in the Pauline letters or the Revelation would lead to confusion, to put it mildly.

I have also found that longer series lose the attention of a congregation. I try to keep series of messages relatively short. The longest series I do are my Lenten sermons. Most series of sermons I do are 4 weeks.

*Mainline traditions are:

United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Churches of Christ, the American Baptist Churches (ABCUSA), and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

** Elizabeth Achtemeier’s book Preaching from the Old Testament is one of my favorite books and is one of the best books on preaching anywhere.

Preaching from the Old Testament

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