As it’s New Year’s Day, people are thinking about their New Year’s Resolutions. What, this year, are you resolved to do? If you are a pastor, let me make a little case for resolving to prepare your sermons earlier. That is, considerably earlier.

Now, before I go on, let me just say a couple of things. First, as long time readers will know, I prep my sermons quite far in advance. Just before Christmas, I was preparing sermons that I will deliver in March. I am, now we’re in January, already working on sermons in April and beginning to think about my Easter sermon. All of which is to say, this is my setup.

Second, I want to make clear this is not a should or a must. There is no compulsion here. The case I am going to make is on the basis of something I have found helpful and nothing more. You don’t have to do it. Having said that, I will say that whenever I have made this case in the past, some have been quick to protest that what I’m going to suggest is ‘impossible’ or ‘wouldn’t work for me’.

The first line is clearly not true because I do it, as do others, so it’s definitely possible. I’ll even offer some suggestions about how you could make it happen at the end. The second line is absolutely fine if true. Do whatever works for you to offer the best sermons you possibly can. But I have a sneaking suspicion some recognise what I’m going to suggest might help them improve both their preaching and other aspects of church life but they are quick to self-justify their existing approach because they ultimately don’t want the hassle. Again, there is no compulsion to do what I’m going to suggest. Nobody must and you don’t answer to me at any rate. But if you recognise it genuinely would (or could) improve your preaching and maybe other aspects of church life too, perhaps this resolution is worth thinking about for 2025?

How does early prep help your sermon?

There are three basic reasons relating to sermon prep for my suggestion: (1) a pastoral buffer; (2) a stress buffer; (3) better understanding of the book you’re in.

First, preparing well ahead gives you a pastoral buffer. By that I mean, we have all experienced occasions where pastoral emergencies and issues have taken up our entire week. Sunday is barrelling down on us and the phone goes with yet another fire that needs putting out. Sometimes it’s a complex issue that eats all our time; sometimes it’s a multiplicity of issues that come one after the other. The problem is, time and tide wait for no man. Sunday always comes and doesn’t care for the pastoral priorities on your plate. The time you may have set aside to prepare your sermon may well have been, gone and got swallowed up by the entirely legitimate needs of your members. These things are no issue if you have already prepared your sermon months ago and, although it might lack an edit or the polish it might otherwise have, you essentially have a sermon there ready to go. The pastoral emergencies have little to no impact on the quality of your sermon when you run a significant pastoral buffer.

Second, early preparation provides a stress buffer. Whilst some of us may not care one jot about last-minute prep, more than a few pastors I know find looming deadlines quite stressful. Every Sunday provides a fresh opportunity for such stress and every pastoral issue that needs addressing, eating up our preparation time, piles Pelion upon Ossa. But a significant sermon buffer takes all that stress away. Sunday may be coming, but your prep was done long ago. The phone may ring for a pastoral emergency, and you are able to drop what you’re dong and give it the attention it needs without the anxiety about what you will do on Sunday morning because it has all been taken care of. If you’re anything like me, even on weeks where there are no pastoral emergencies, you may just find some passages harder to get into and understand than others. Early prep gives you the room to take a second week to look at a tough passage rather than stressing that you’re not sure, you’ve got to present something and this will do because Sunday is upon you. A buffer does wonders for the already quite high stress levels of the pastorate.

Third, running a buffer gives you a better understanding of the book you are in. Most pastors seem to prepare each sermon as they go. They address what is in the passage as they get to it. But sometimes, things only crystalise for us when we have understood later parts of the book we’re in too. We’ve understood where the argument is heading and only in hindsight properly grasp what this bit is doing. Having a sermon buffer builds the ability to see that into your preparation. You may prep a sermon, leave it a few months, get further down the line preparing later sermons in the same series and discover how an earlier passage was functioning in the book in a way you did not quite realise at the time. But the buffer gives you the opportunity to go back and change your sermon before you deliver it in light of what you now understand from a later passage. You get both a clearer understanding of how that passage functions and have opportunity to alter your sermon before you deliver it to reflect your better understanding.

How does early prep help other aspects of church life?

I am convinced that earlier preparation also helps other aspects of church life. Again, you don’t have to run your church this way, but early preparation allows you to do so and (potentially) helps you to do it more effectively. There are three main areas of church life helped by early preparation: (1) pastoral ministry; (2) children’s work; (3) home groups.

As noted above, having a buffer stops you stressing about pastoral emergencies eating up preparation time for Sunday. As a result, I am convinced pastoral ministry is improved by early preparation. We are freed to spend as much time as needed, or as is helpful, with whomever needs it in the week without fear that we’ll have nothing for Sunday. We don’t have divided attention, but can serve the needs of our members most helpfully when we know our preparation has long been done.

In our church, we run whole-church curriculum. That is, the children in Sunday School read and learn from the same passage as the adults in the main meeting. Set aside any concerns about how you might teach Song of Songs or Hosea to the children (both of which we have done when we had series on them) and see the benefits of teaching the children the same things as the adults in the main meeting. It fosters conversations in the car among families, over lunch and allows other members of the church to take a knowledgeable interest in what the children have learnt because they have heard the same things too. Preparing your sermon early allows you to give your manuscript to whomever writes your Sunday School lessons so that the key points and applications are the same for the adults and the children. It allows you to teach the whole counsel of God to the whole church and to foster family discipleship as parents and children have all had the same essential meal.

This third benefit, I appreciate to some degree, can exist in other setups. Our church takes the sermon preached on Sunday and presses further into the points of application midweek. However, the earlier you can give your manuscript to those preparing to lead midweek groups, the more likely you are to get helpful questions and discussions in your homegroup. Your early preparation gives time for others to prepare their sessions and questions more thoughtfully. Rather than rushing out a set of questions or being fed questions from the pastor that they have no time to think about, they have time to think about the key points of the sermon and formulate helpful questions amplifying the key points of teaching.

How can I build up a buffer?

The big question is, how can you build up a buffer if you are currently operating on a week-by-week basis? There are various possible ways you can do it. It’s liable to depend on your particular context and setup as to which you might do.

One option, if you have others who can preach in-house or you have outside speakers you can invite in, is to blank out one month using other speakers. You can use that month to plan sermons and build up a month buffer. Thereafter, if you wanted to extend it, give an opportunity to preach maybe once-per-month to another speaker (in-house or external) and ensure that you still plan a sermon even on the weeks you are not due to deliver one. You will then, over time, build up an additional month buffer every four months.

If you can’t access visiting speakers or in-house preachers for a full month, you can do as above and just have an outside speaker once per month. If you prepare your sermons week-by-week as usual but ensure you prepare your next sermon even when you have a visiting speaker come, over the course of a year, you will build up a 12 week buffer (3 months). Even if you account for holidays where you have a proper break, you will still get an 8 week buffer (2 months) by the end of the year.

Perhaps you are a lone preacher with no in-house support whatsoever and not much access to outside speakers. I appreciate this next approach will be harder, but it is certainly possible. Namely, prepare two sermons each week rather than one. Some might protest this is too much. I would gently point out that most pastors until fairly recently were used to preaching twice on a Sunday. Hard as it may be, it is hardly impossible or unheard of. For those who already preach twice on a Sunday and have no other support, I don’t say this purely for the sake of building up an optional buffer, you may want to think about the sustainability of that model altogether. It would be would be worth asking whether one better prepared sermon is better than two hastily crafted ones. You may still conclude ‘no’, but it might be worth asking the question.

If preparing two sermons every week seems like too much, perhaps you could consider preparing an extra sermon once per month. As per the earlier approach, by the end of the year, that should yield an extra 12 sermons (8 if you don’t include your holidays) and you have built your buffer that way.

Finally, if none of those would work very well for you, there is a final option. Do a one-off series you have prepared before. In effect, re-deliver a set of sermons (or, better, deliver for your existing people a set of sermons you have delivered elsewhere). I’m not suggesting this should be any sort of regular thing. But if you have delivered a series before that was long enough ago that your people may not remember it, or you’ve had such a turnover in your church that most the people there weren’t there to hear it the first time, or you’ve preach it in a previous pastorate and you are now in a new church. This means there is little to no prep for you in that series which frees you up to think about whatever series you want to do following it and begin prepping your sermons for that. This gives you a buffer immediately of whatever the length of your prior series.

These are eminently doable solutions. Even if they are not ideal (I’d suggest particularly the last option) the case for doing it is that it will lead to potentially improved sermons going forward. The buffer is a means of getting better sermons and the means of getting a buffer may be sub-optimal for a short time for long term gain.

So, there it is. My suggestion of a New Year’s resolution for pastors and church leaders. You absolutely don’t have to do it. It’s not in the Bible. But I think it would help many of our sermons, it would help much of our stress-levels and it would serve other aspects of church life. What is more, it is – despite the protestations of some – entirely achievable if you want to do it. Why not see how it might help serve your preparation and the people to whom you have been given the responsibility of teaching God’s Word.