The NOW Podcast: Practical Advice for New Pastors - Episode 05: How to Outline a Sermon

How Sermon Notes Become a Pulpit Outline

Welcome to Not Only Water. This podcast is dedicated to providing practical advice for new pastors. In 1st Timothy chapter 5 verse 23, Paul tells Timothy to drink not only water, but to use a little wine for his stomach's sake.

This short piece of practical advice is the inspiration for this series. Get ready to dive into today's topic. Here's your host, Keith Foskey. Welcome back to Not Only.

Water, Practical Advice for New Pastors. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am your host. Today we're going to continue on from the lesson we began in the last podcast, where we began to talk about how to put together a sermon.

And I gave some advice on how to produce your sermon notes, and not the notes that you take into the pulpit, but the notes that you use to study. And I talked about how can print the text, and that way you can write on it, and make your notes on it, and things like that, and then also printing out commentaries that can help you to understand the text better, and to give you a fuller, more...well, I would say a fuller and better understanding of what the text is saying after you've done your initial study.

So today we're going to go the next step, okay? Because we're going down the list of what we're going to do. We're beginning with putting together our material to study. Now we've got to translate that into something that we can use to preach from, because you're not going to be able to take that...just commentaries into the pulpit.

You're not going to be able to take just the text with all of your notes scribbled on it. You want to take something into the pulpit that you can use. Now there are different ways that men do this. There's no such thing as a right or wrong answer on this, so I'm not trying to tell you that if what you're doing is working for you, that it's wrong.

That's not the point. I'm going to tell you what I do, what works for me, and again, this is...that's what this is about. Me giving you tips and advice the way that I do it doesn't make it right, just makes it one more option that you have that you can begin to consider if you are having some difficulty in what you need to do, because there are multiple ways that people will take their sermon into the pulpit.

We say from the study to the pulpit, there's a lot of different ways. Some people don't take anything at all, and that is a goal that is, I think, very lofty. The late Dr. R .C. Sproul, who was in many ways not a mentor for me, because we weren't that close, but in a lot of ways he taught me so many things, like a mentor would, just through his program, his radio program, Renewing the Mind, and other ways through his books, but one of the things that he did, and I went to a pastor's conference where he was teaching.

It was a very small conference, only about a hundred people there, and I had the opportunity to talk a little bit with him. It was really great. And one of the things he really stressed was the idea of trying to preach without notes, and I remember him and Dr. Lawson having that interaction on the chancel.

They were talking, and he was like, I'm just gonna take your notes away, Steve, and make you get up there and preach. And I've always loved the idea of preaching without notes, but at this point I have not reached the level that I feel like that I'm comfortable preaching without notes completely.

But there is a difference between having no notes and the other end of the spectrum, which is the full manuscript that is literally everything is written out, from let us pray, to bow your heads, to all of those different things, that every single word and action is printed.

And that is a, it's like two extremes, right? It's like you have the extreme of absolutely nothing except the Bible, to the other extreme of everything I say is going to be scripted, and I'm gonna carry that manuscript into the pulpit.

Now some people will say what they do is they manuscript their sermon, but they don't take it in the pulpit. And they say that helps me to write myself clear, but not be tied to the manuscript when I'm actually preaching to the people.

And that's fine. That's one method that I think works for several people, and if that's what works for you, great. If you want to write a manuscript, and if you want to preach from that manuscript, that's up to you.

But that's not the way I do it. And I would say what I would do, what I do is more of a hybrid outline. And how I outline is really the reason for today's lesson. I'm going to show you how I begin the outline, and then I'm going to give you, I'm actually going to put on the screen, a picture of the sermon I'm going to preach this Sunday.

So it's recently outlined. Now you'll notice when I actually show you the sermon I'm preaching this Sunday, that it's going to be a lot more full than the outline I'm going to show you how to make, because I've already gone through, and I've already put the meat on the bones.

And that's going to be a later episode when I talk about how to put meat on the bones. And what that means is once you have outlined the text, once you have got the main headings, and the main points that you want to get across from the text, once you've done that, then you've got to come back in and you've got to put meat on the bones.

You've got to consider perhaps some cross-references, which are, which is a great way to put meat on the bones. Some illustrations, which I think the first and best place to get illustrations is from the Bible.

But there are other places, of course, that you can get illustrations, life experience, things like that. These are all ways that we put meat on the bones, and again we'll talk about that in a later episode.

But today I just want to show you the basic structure of how I would put a sermon together after I have done my initial study, after I've already got everything outlined on my notes, I already know what the outline is going to look like, I know how many main headings I'm going to deal with, and the amount of points I'm going to deal with.

And all of that is already done in the other document that we used in the last program. And again, if you're listening to this podcast today, you may want to switch over and watch the YouTube or Sermon Audio video of this, because if you're just listening to this, you're going to be missing out on seeing what I'm doing on the screen.

So this is a video podcast. So I'm going to go ahead and pull up a blank page. And I'm going to switch over to capturing the screen. And now I can show you what the... Okay, so this is, jokingly, this is every minister's nightmare, right?

Is it just looking down at a blank page? Because we have to fill this up. And so this is, or every writer's nightmare, you say, is just looking at the blank page. And sometimes this little blinking, this little blinking indicator right here is really scary, because I don't know where to begin.

I don't know what I'm going to do. But at this point, you do. Because if you followed the steps from the last lesson, then you have already begun to... You should already have your outline written. It's just handwritten on your other page.

Now you're going to be transferring that over to this document, which is going to begin the phase of creating your final document. That's what you're going to take into the pulpit. So the first thing I'll do is I'll have a title.

I might do a show later on titling sermons, because this is actually... Some people think, you know, titles are unnecessary. I like to use titles as a way to get people thinking ahead of time. I'll publish my titles before the sermon in the bulletin.

I'll publish them on Facebook. Say, hey, this Sunday I'm going to be looking at The Lord Was With Joseph, Genesis 39. That was my sermon last week. Or, this week I'm going to be preaching at another church, and this week's sermon, the title is, What is the Gospel?

And so I might publish that with the text, along with it. So I know that this week, what the title is, what is the gospel, and then the text that goes along with that is going to be 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 1 to 22.

So right next to the title, I would put the text. On the same line, now some people might put it underneath, and for a while I did that, but to save space now, I do these the same. Now another thing I do is I want this to be in something that is kind to my eyes.

So as I get older, I find myself in a situation where I need a little bit more size. So I used to do it in 10 point font, so that I could get as much on one page as I possibly could. Now I bring it up to 14, and I find that to be pretty good.

So let's just say I was, you know, what is the gospel, and the text would be 1 Corinthians. I hate it when it doesn't capitalize. Let me try that again. 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 22 is my text for this week.

Alright, so that that's the beginning. Now, if you're unfamiliar with how to outline a paper, or how to outline a sermon, or anything like that, typically an outline is based on an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

So with that in mind, that's the way, and I use, I don't do this so much anymore, but when I first started writing sermons, I literally wrote them like I was writing a paper. So I would begin with an introduction, and I would write that word out, and then I would put down here the, I wouldn't say the body, but I would say the outline, and I did that all caps for a reason.

I'll get back to that in a moment. And then a conclusion. Alright, so my introduction, outline, and conclusion. This is my, this is the basic framework for any type of lecture, or any type of lesson that you're giving.

Everything is sort of based on this. You're going to introduce what you're going to say, you're going to say it, and then you're going to conclude by restating whatever it is that you've said. That's public speaking 101, that's presenting your information 101.

You know, we begin by introducing what we say. This is what I'm going to say, then I say it, and this is what I said. You know, that's the basic outline of what you're doing. So once I have done that, now I have to produce my actual outline, and the reason why, again, I said I did this in capitals, because this is actually the main body of the sermon, what's going to go in this portion right here.

The introduction and the conclusion, I often write last, because the introduction and the conclusion are going to be, I look at it like a house, and this is a good way to think about it. If I was going to build a house, I would build the house first before I put the front porch and the back porch on.

The front porch is the entrance to the house, the back porch is the, in a sense, the exit of the house. So I don't build the front porch before I build the house. So oftentimes my introduction and my conclusion will come last, after I have written the actual body, which is based on the text, which is the real sermon is the body of the sermon.

That's why I did this whole capital thing. I wanted you to see, this is the main part. And so here, I'm going to, let's say my sermon has three points. I'm a good Baptist, I have a three-point sermon.

So I'm going to begin with a capital I, and I'm just going to write 0 .1. Now, on my computer, if I hit enter, it gives me immediately a number two in Roman numerals. So we'll just say 0 .2. Oh, okay.

And then 0 .3. Alright, so that's it. Now, I'm going to mention in my sermon for this week, which I'm going to show in a minute, I actually have six points, and my introduction has three introductory points.

So sometimes this does get a little more broad, but I want to have my main thoughts outlined well, to where I know that the points that I'm making, whatever they are, and if I'm doing a narrative study, this might be different than if I'm doing a didactic study.

Like right now I'm in Genesis, so often my narrative study is the points, or what's happening in the text. Like my sermon in Genesis 39 was Joseph exalted in Pharaoh's, or excuse me, Joseph exalted in Potiphar's house, Joseph, or excuse me, Joseph, what was the word I used, propositioned by Potiphar's wife, Joseph was falsely accused by Potiphar's wife, and then finally Joseph exalted in Pharaoh's prison, because that's what happened.

He went from Potiphar's house to the the king's prison, and it was through the process of what happened with his wife, so, or what happened with Potiphar's wife. So that was the four main points, or the four main narrative points of that text, and that allows me to go through and maintain the structure and outline of the sermon as I'm going through very, very simply.

Alright, so with that in mind, whatever my points are, now, here's an interesting little trick. Depending on whether you're using Word, or you may be using another software, you may be using, like I'm using Pages or Word, it doesn't matter.

Most software will do this for you, but if not, you can do it on your own, it's not that hard. But if you, if you go up to back to your first point, and you tab, and you enter and tab down, it's going to open up this second point here, but if you tab over, it gives you a sub point.

So now, you can do sub points on your main point. There. Now, I'm gonna, if I hit back, it just, I'd like to have a space there. So let's say, on my second one, I only have two sub points, and then on my third one, I'm going to have, I'm going to have, okay.

So again, that's a basic outline. Now, I'm going to show you what this looks like in real life in a moment, but for now, you'll notice, I've got these now, a lot of times I'll come back and I'll actually bold the main point, sometimes I'll even make it bigger, that way it really stands out.

So I'm pulling those up, making them 16. Now, I can really see those, and my sub points, I may even go in and create a, you know, a minor point under that. So, you know, or an additional point, or I may even go in and add a cross-reference text here.

So depending on what each of these sub points is doing, I may go in and do a text like that. Now, I'm going to come back, I'm going to come out of the screen for a minute, just to understand, this is not the only way to do this.

This is my giving you my advice on what I do, and I hope that this is helpful to you, because all I'm doing is I'm creating structure, and a good sermon will have a structure to it. It will have something that keeps it together.

Now, some people like Dr. Lawson, again, I keep referencing him, he likes to have alliterative points where all of the points will either start with the same letter, or they'll end with the same sound, like the ION sound, like execution, proposition, preposition, or something, that sound at the end, and that's fine.

I do that sometimes. Sometimes I think it's fun to get a little creative and come up with alliterative outlines, and I do find that oftentimes people will, in one sense, remember that a little better.

At least they'll be able to see the structure, and I put it up on the screen, we have screens in our church, I put it up, sometimes I'll print it in the bulletin, just to make it to where people are able to follow along better.

And that's all this is. All we're doing is trying to, we're trying to feed the sheep as best we can, and we feed the sheep as best we can by providing the information from the Scripture in a way that is understandable and cohesive, that they're able to take it in, and it's not just a smattering of ideas.

We want our thoughts to be thought through, to be structured well, and that way, when we look over the sermon, when we are starting and we're stopping, we see that the introduction is the on-ramp that gets us into the outline of the major body of the sermon, and the conclusion is the off-ramp.

It takes us out and to the conclusion. We're gonna talk about this in a later episode as well. I had a lot to say on this, but the conclusion should take us to some point of urgency, where we consider the fact, okay, is there something here that I need to repent of?

Is there an area here that I need to be corrected in? Is there an area here that I need to be encouraged in or exhorted to? All of these things may come at the conclusion, but all of that's based on the text, and it's coming out of the text.

Okay, now what, you know, is that conclusion portion? Now, I did say I was gonna do this, so before I end, I want to show you what a real sermon looks like. Again, going back into here. Here is the one that we just did.

It's the not real. Here is the actual real one for this week. Okay, so you'll notice something else I do is, I sometimes will make color, because I preach off of an iPad, but even if you preached off of paper, you could print this in color.

You'll notice here that I use bold and I use color for my subheadings. Now, I didn't mention the use of indents and the use of dashes. Understand, this first part here is not normal for me. I'm adding in a thank you for Pastor Cody.

I've been invited to preach at another church. Pastor Cody's having me, so I did this little thank you for inviting me, and I talk about our church and what we do in handing out gospel tracts. So this is, before I read the text, sometimes I'll just do this little intro into what we're going to talk about.

Today, we're going to be talking about people who identify themselves as Christians, but can't explain what the gospel is. And so the title of the sermon is, What is the Gospel? 1 Corinthians 15, 1 to 22.

But before I read the text, I'm going to give this little short intro where I thank the person who invited me, and I mention the handing out of gospel tracts and people not understanding the gospel. That's sort of getting them ready for what we're about to read.

Now, I always put the reading of the text, I highlight it, I put these stars around it. That's just something for me, just so that I know to stop here and focus on the reading of the text. Remember, three things that we have to do.

Read the text, explain the text, apply the text. Don't ever miss that that first one. It's hugely important. Reading the text clearly is a huge part of your sermon. That's the only part of the sermon that's perfect, is God's Word.

So now, as we get into the message, I have three very quick introductory points. Now, this is not the sermon. This is introducing the topic of the gospel. Three things. One, it's essential that we get the gospel right.

I referenced Galatians. Number two, it's essential that we be reminded of the gospel regularly. I mentioned Martin Luther, who said, My people have to hear the gospel every week because every week they forget.

Notice Luther's quote is in green. That way I can see it clearly, and it's differentiated from everything else around it. Then the third thing, it's essential that we recognize that the gospel is the overall message of Scripture.

Oh, I have a typo there. I'm the overall message of Scripture. And you'll notice I have two cross-references here in blue. You'll notice up here I did the Galatians cross-references in blue. Down here, Genesis 315.

And I did it in the New King James Bible because that's the translation they're using in the church I'm going to. So that's something else to consider. If you're going to preach in another church where they're not using the Bible you're used to, ask the pastor, Should I use the Bible that they use?

And oftentimes that's the right thing to do. So we have Galatians 3, Genesis 2. Now we finally get down to the outline and the exposition. Notice I have it highlighted in a similar way as I had the text highlighted.

The outline and exposition is highlighted so that I tell them, this is I'm getting into the body. I'm getting into the sermon. Now that other part, I think it's probably going to take me probably 5 -10 minutes to actually get to this point.

And I'm looking at the sermon, probably a 45 to 50 minute sermon. The first 10 minutes is getting everything ready, getting everybody in, understand what we're talking about. What's the issues here? Why are we talking about this?

What's the heart of the subject that we're dealing with? And now here's the six aspects of the gospel that we should understand from this passage. This is from 1 Corinthians 15, 1 to 22. One, in death there is propitiation.

Two, in burial there's confirmation. Three, in resurrection there's vindication. Four, in witnesses there is verification. Number five, in scripture there is affirmation. Number six, in Christ there's representation.

That's the six points of the sermon. And each one of those points, I have now my body of each point. So this one has two main points, A and B, and then it has these minor sub points underneath that, and I have my cross-references in blue.

Same thing here. I have a quote from the Heidelberg Catechism in green. That's differentiated from everything else. Getting down here, here's another cross-reference in blue. Sometimes I highlight things in purple, and again, this is just the way my mind works.

I need it to stand out from other things, but I don't want to mistake this for a cross-reference, so I do it different than I've done other things. And some people might think, well this is just crazy, it would never work for me, and it might not.

I'm not telling you the color thing you have to do. I'm just giving you the outline, all right? And then we get finally through the six points, and we come to the conclusion. Notice the conclusion is very short.

The conclusion is, we stand today under one of two banners. Some stand condemned under the banner labeled Adam, and some stand righteous under the banner of Christ. That's the urgency, right? Because we either have, through the gospel, been saved, or we are either still in Adam, and we haven't believed the gospel and trusted in Christ.

And that's why we're reading all the way to verse 22, because verse 22 says, in Adam all die, in Christ all are made alive. That's the point of all of this. You're either believing the gospel, and you're in Christ, or you're not believing the gospel, and you're still lost.

You're still in Adam. So again, this is just an example. It's not a perfect example, but it is an example of what a sermon of mine would look like, and an outline would look like. And I wouldn't call that a manuscript.

Again, it's only a certain number of pages. Excuse me. The actual number of pages is six. So it's not a full manuscript. It's only six pages, but it's certainly full. It's much more than no notes, or just like some people, like a pastor who preached here one time, H .B. Charles, very wonderful godly man.

He doesn't use any notes, but he says sometimes he'll bring a index card into the pulpit with him, with just a few things written down. At this point, I'm not there yet. Maybe I'll be there one day, but this is the way that I do it now, and I'm hoping, by God's grace, that this will somehow be a help to you.

I'm gonna end the program now because, again, we're past 20 minutes. I hope that this has been a help for you. If you have questions, or you want me to dive deeper into something that I said today, please feel free to send me a message.

Also, don't forget to please like and subscribe to this podcast. If you're on a podcast or YouTube, please like and subscribe to our channel, and send a comment in. Please let me know if this is helpful to you.

I want to thank you again for listening to Not Only Water. My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your host. Thank you for listening, and may God bless you.