How To Write A Sermon Outline

You may wonder, “How do I Write a Sermon Outline?”

A good sermon outline is composed of three basic building blocks of material.

First, a good sermon outline has biblical material.

A strong outline will help you communicate the “stuff” taking place in the scripture passage.

It helps your listeners understand Abraham’s predicament, Paul’s argument for justification by faith or the seven churches mentioned in Revelation.

If you are going to learn how to write a sermon outline, the first building block you need is biblical material.

Next, a good sermon outline has timeless material.  That’s the second building block of a good sermon outline.

Every passage in the Bible communicates something timeless.  Every passage in the Bible communicates something for every generation.

So a good sermon outline doesn’t just communicate historical, biblical facts.  It doesn’t just tell us about a guy named Elisha or just about the Philistines or the temple in Jerusalem.

A good sermon outline gets us to the timeless principles that each of these scriptural passages teach us.

For example, your first building block may tell us how God told Abraham to pack up all his bags, leave everything behind and go to the land that God would show him.

In your second building block you need to discover the timeless principle that this passage communicates to us.  After some study you may decide this passage is primarily telling us that following God sometimes involves risk.

Following God involves risk.  Right there.  That’s your timeless principle.  That’s building block number 2.

That leads us to the third and final building block of how to write a sermon outline.

The third piece of the puzzle is contemporary material.  By now you have biblical (historical) material, timeless material and now last, contemporary material.

This is where you show the relevance of the scripture passage to everyday life.  It answers questions like, “Where does this biblical truth show up in real life?”

In this third building block of the sermon outline you might give current examples of how following God involves risk.

For instance, you might tell a story how a supervisor at work wanted you to shade the truth on some company reports, but as a Christian you took a risk and told her or him you refused to deceive others.

You could give a million different examples.

Include these three building blocks and you will learn how to write a sermon outline that has great impact!

 

Your Sermon Coach,

Randall Garing

 

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