The 6-step expository sermon prep workflow built by working pastors

Most expository preaching workflows you'll read online were written by people who preach four times a year at a conference. This one was built by people who preach forty-eight Sundays a year and have to keep doing it next week.

Expository preaching is a discipline. Like any discipline, it scales when you put it on rails. Here are the six steps that working pastors run every week. The pastors using this rhythm are the ones still preaching well in year fifteen — not the ones grinding it out and burning out by year seven.

Step 1 — Read the text. Five times. Out loud.

Before any commentary. Before any cross-reference. Before any tool. Read the passage aloud five times in five different translations if you can. Note what surprises you. Note what disturbs you. Note what doesn't make sense.

Those notes are your sermon. Everything else is supporting evidence.

Step 2 — Context, fast.

You don't need to write a dissertation on first-century Ephesus. You need three things: historical setting, literary placement in the book, and any word in the text doing heavy lifting. Twenty minutes, not three hours.

This is the step where AI tools earn their keep. A good research engine will surface everything you'd find in an hour of flipping commentaries — in three minutes — without inventing facts. Use them. They're not preaching for you; they're reading commentaries for you.

Step 3 — Structure before sentences.

Write the big idea in one sentence. Write the movements in three to five lines. Write the close in one sentence. If you can't compress the sermon to a sticky note, you're not done structuring.

The temptation is to start writing paragraphs. Resist. Pastors who structure first finish in half the time and preach twice as clearly.

Step 4 — Manuscript, fast and out loud.

Talk it through aloud. Either dictate or talk-then-type. Your written voice and your spoken voice are different — and your congregation hears the spoken one. Write the way you preach, not the way you publish.

Step 5 — Rehearse twice. Time it.

Read it back. Cut anything that doesn't land. Time the second pass. If it's three minutes long on the page, it's seven minutes long in the pulpit. Build the cushion in now, not on stage.

Step 6 — Deliver, then debrief.

After the sermon, take 90 seconds and write down: What landed? What didn't? What would I do differently? Most pastors skip this and re-make the same mistakes for ten years. The ones who keep notes get better every year. Compound interest on craft.

What's not in this workflow

No "pray and let the Spirit write it." Prayer is not absent — it saturates every step — but the workflow is the workflow. Discipline is how the Spirit gets clear delivery through you. Pastors who treat unprepared preaching as spiritual are usually preaching shallow sermons and calling it depth.

Run this rhythm for ten weeks. By week six, your sermons will be sharper. By week ten, your prep time will be cut in half. By Sunday in year two, your congregation will notice — even if they can't tell you why.