MAKE GOOD SERMON OUTLINES ---FAST--By Walton L.

Marsh

Copyright 2007 by Walton L. Marsh all rights reserved

Published by Walton L. Marsh, Gainesville, FL

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for permission may be addressed to Walton Marsh PO BOX 358754, Gainesville, FL 32635.

Why make an outline?

I believe that if you are to do a good job week in and week out you need to preach from an outline. If you attempt to preach extemporaneously once or twice per week, you will soon dry up and begin to repeat yourself. So my advice to anyone who is serious about preaching is to forget about extemporaneous sermons. Do not confuse speaking without notes as extemporaneous preaching. Some preachers develop an outline, practice it, memorize it and speak from the mental outline. This is a different thing. But even this starts from a well-developed outline. Preaching from a written manuscript is not preaching! Even if you are a great reader, and can read with passion and feeling, reading your manuscript is not preaching. It is reading! Remember that preaching is alive and you give birth to the sermon as it is delivered. A manuscript ties you down, limits your response to the listeners and limits Gods influence on your heart. So as you can tell, I will advocate developing an outline and taking it to the pulpit with you.
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What can a well-developed outline do for you? First, it keeps you on track with a degree of freedom. You are not caged like you would be with a manuscript nor are you free to chase every stray thought that may come to mind. The outline will always pull you back to the central point you are trying to make. Second, making an outline organizes your thoughts into an understandable package that can be grasped by your hearers. Third, an outline allows you to make significant eye contact with the listeners. Every word is not written in the outline so you can have the freedom to create as you speak to match the reactions of your congregation. Fourth, the outline is a permanent record of your sermon that can be saved in a file for later use. But at the same time it will never be the same sermon again that you first preached. It will change every time you preach it. A sermon outline is like your skeleton. Your skeleton supports your flesh and organs. Your skeleton gives you your basic shape and stature, but it does not give you a personality or complexion. Skeletons look so much alike that it takes an expert to tell one skeleton from another. It is the flesh that lives. So it is with the sermon. Your outline is a skeleton, a complete detailed skeleton on which you grow the meat of the sermon. If you preach another sermon from the same outline it can be very different in its second iteration. The thoroughly developed outline is the record of your thoughts and study on a particular subject. It is
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your treasure, to be saved and reviewed again and again and to have new fresh meat hung on the old bones. Never throw away an outline even if at first it looks like a dud. Later you may have new flesh for those bones.

The structure of a good outline

A good outline is first and foremost simple. I dont mean simple in the ideas that you will express while preaching from the outline, but simple in its structure. It is counterproductive to create a complex outline. You want your listeners to be able to take something home from your sermon. Keep it simple and it will be remembered. Make it complex and it will not make it to the front door of the church before it is forgotten. A good outline has some underlying glue that holds it together and gives it a natural organization that is comfortable to the mind of the listeners. This may be a common subject, or a common adjective, describing a subject. It may be a common verb or action. It must have something that keeps the main points together, that binds them to one another. Sermons that do not have this glue seem awkward and synthetic. This underlying connecting glue is what makes your sermon seem natural and uncontrived.

The value of 3 points

So, with simplicity in mind, I like to keep my sermons to three main points. Three main points are best unless the scripture obviously requires more. If more than 4 points are necessary to get your message across, make it into two sermons. Remember that your main points need to support the purpose of the sermon. Each main point will be supported by one to three first level sub-points, which develop the ideas you want to express. Second level sub-points are used to refine or clarify the supporting first level sub points. We will talk more about this later. The simple 3x2 point skeleton I think that the most powerful sermons follow the format of having 3 main points, and 2 sub point under each main point. Why is this powerful. Because the mind can follow it easily. It is memorable and it tends to be simple, which is a quality lacking in a lot of preaching. The basic outline follows this format: Introduction I. First Main Point a. Sub point 1 b. Sub point 2 II. Second Main Point a. Sub point 1 b. Sub point 2 III. Third Main Point
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a. Sub point 1 b. Sub point 2 Call to Action This simple skeleton will ALWAYS result in a concise, easy to follow sermon. Ok, so far so good, I am sure you understand these simple ideas. The biggest problem for most preachers is how to come up with these points? How do you flesh out the outline? The next section is where the rubber meets the road. I will show you the technique of extracting an outline from any scripture or from any idea. First some guiding principles. In general start from a scripture and work to the sermon. Use sections of scripture not just one verse. If you have a sermon idea, find a scripture to support it. As a preacher your most valuable resource is the Bible. When preachers leave the foundation of Gods word and just use their own ideas or some moral issue they have stopped being preachers and have become lecturers or speakers. Preachers need to preach the Word of God. I am not going to teach you how to be an interesting speaker to the Rotary Club but to
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develop outlines from the Word of God. So use the scripture as your foundation. It is important to use whole sections of scripture for two reasons. First of all you want to be familiar with the context of the scripture you are focusing upon and to be accurate in your interpretation. Second of all, by using longer sections of scripture it gives your more fertile ground for your sermon to develop in. For instance. Instead of just using John 3:16 and focusing your mind exclusively on that verse and getting tunnel vision in developing your outline. 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. You would want to consider the total story of Nicodemus. John 3:1-21. By doing this you open up a whole world of possibilities for the sermon. Later I will show you techniques that use these additional scriptures to develop the sub points of the sermon. If you have an idea or a concept on which you feel led to preach you should first find a scripture that teaches that idea or concept. Here again, do not focus on only one proof text. You will want to study the context to be sure you are preaching a theological truth, not some half baked idea. How do you do that? When I
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do this the first place I look is in a concordance to discover the relevant scriptures that may use a certain key word. For instance. If I am led to preach on a moral issue like alcohol I would first look up the key words related to this issue: drunk, drunkard, strong drink, wine, beer, red eyes and any thing else that comes to mind. The concordances I prefer are Strongs Exhaustive Concordance and Youngs Analytic Concordance. In recent years I have been using the computer program called QuickVerse, which utilizes aspects of Strongs Exhaustive Concordance. The computer program is very much faster and convenient. I recommend that you look into getting a program like this, it will save you a bunch of time. Once you have a scripture then you can begin to find your outline points.

The Golden Hammer Technique

This technique is simple but it frees the mind to be open to inspiration and to creative ideas. First you must pray. I firmly believer that God will give you the sermon he wants you to preach. However you must ask for it. Now, you dont need to spend 4 hours praying because God already knows your needs, he knows your congregation and he already has your sermon selected, he just wants you to ask him. Next you need a legal pad, or a wire bound notebook.
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At the top of a page write Purpose Then write one sentence that briefly describes the outcome you wish from the sermon. NOT the subject of the sermon. What you wish to see happen because you preached the sermon. For instance. I want to see people come to know the Lord because of this sermon. Or, I want to convince people to not drink alcohol. Or, I want to convince my congregation to love one another. See my point. This is not the subject of the sermon but the RESULT you wish to see because of the sermon.. This purpose statement will help keep you on track as you develop your sermon outline. Next on the page write. Who is Speaking Then write To Whom is he speaking Then write Where is he speaking Then write What is he really saying Then write What is happening Then write To whom is it happening These questions need to be answered before you can go to the next step in the process. By answering these questions you are seeding your mind with the germs of many ideas. The next step is to begin to look over the focus scripture for key words or key phrases. Look for words that carry the message of the text. Look for adjectives (words that describe the subjects or the nouns in the scripture.) Look for the verbs that are
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crucial to the action of the scripture. Then write these down on the page of the note book where you wrote the purpose statement and the who, what , where questions. As you look over these key words let your mind loose to roam to related words or concepts and write them down as they come to you. Even if they sound crazy at the time write them anyway. You will discover that some concepts are coming together already. You may even find a key phrase that might be one of your main points. But dont try to force anything yet. If God gives your mind your three main points go ahead and write them down now. But if not, go to the next step. Get out a dictionary. Not one of those twenty pound unabridged monsters. Just a small paper back dictionary. What you will do is use this book of words to jog your brain and plant more seeds of creativity. Select one of your key words and look it up. Then look up the synonyms that may be given in the dictionary. Look up the antonyms (opposite words, for example, black-white). If anything grabs your attention write it down on the page. Then select what you might consider a key word from the text or from one of the associated words you may have already discovered and go to the section of the dictionary that is the first letter of that word. For
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instance if a key word was Mighty I would go to the Ms section. What you will do now is just scan through every word beginning with that letter. If any jump off the page to you, or seem to be related to the sermon, write it down. From this technique you may develop a nice alliterative outline. When using this technique pay special attention to the adjectives and adverbs on your brainstorming page. They really can become the glue for your outline.

Let me give you a few examples

Last week I wanted to preach a sermon to encourage my congregation to be active in evangelism. This became my purpose statement. I searched the concordance for the word witness, witnesses, preach, teach, I came up with the scripture of Matt. 28:1921 I wrote the answers to the questions: Who was speaking? = Jesus. To whom was he speaking?=Disciples. What was he saying? = They need to go and preach the Gospel. What was happening?=Jesus was about to go to heaven. You get the idea? Then I began to write down the key words. Teach, Go, Baptizing, All Nations, With you always etc. As I was doing this my mind began
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to focus on the word GO. It became clear that this was the key word for this particular sermon. So I wrote the following skeleton outline I. Go ?? II. Go ?? III. Go ?? Re-reading the scripture I came up with this Go Believing. Based on a re-reading of verse 18, All power is given unto me, both in heaven and in earth, go ye therefore. . . I decided to go back to the concordance again and look up go I discovered Psalm 126:6 He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. That gave the point Go Weeping So now I have this skeleton I. Go II. Go believing III. Go weeping Once I had the basic organization I began to brainstorm on the 2 sub points I want for each main point. I. Go
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My main idea here is first you must be determined to go. So I start another page in the notebook or on the pad to brainstorm the sub points. I wrote many words and ideas, but focused on determined decided then went to the dictionary and found these words of interest. dare date dedicate declare design desire discipline Now my problem was just in choosing which direction to go in. I felt led to go with I. Go a. Dedicate yourself to GO b. Discipline yourself to GO Using the same process of brainstorming and using the dictionary to free my brain from its routine words I came up with. . . II. Go Believing a. Power of the Promise b. Power of the Purpose c. Power of Persistence III. Go Weeping a. Be soul conscious b. Be sincerely concerned Write your introduction and your call to action It is important that you wait until you have your outline written before you try to write your introduction and call to action. If you start by writing your introduction you are painting yourself into a corner and limiting your freedom to let the sermon develop the way God wants it to develop. Your
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introduction should introduce the actual sermon you wrote.( notice the past tense) Only after you have your outline finished can you create an interesting and relevant introduction. The call to action should directly call the congregation to do something, or to decide something. Remember your purpose statement? It can be easily converted to your call to action. For instance in the sermon on the previous page, the purpose was to encourage my congregation to become more active in evangelism. So the call to action should ask the congregation to do something or to decide something toward this end. For this sermon my call to action was: Because you are commanded to Go, why dont you decide to Go this week. (give an altar call for people to dedicate themselves to go share the Gospel with a neighbor).

Other Techniques That Will Streamline your Outline Preparation.

Embark on a daily Bible reading program and spend some time brainstorming basic three point outlines on every scripture you read. The best way to do this is to
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keep a special notebook for this purpose. As you read a new scripture each day, make some notes of key words and phrases. On the page for that day, write these key words, as you read the scripture. When your reading is done, take about 30 minutes each day and brainstorm, and jot down potential points. You will discover in a few weeks that your brain will begin to think in terms of 3 point sermons. In a few months you will have hundreds of sermons in your notebook and hundreds of more sermons in your head trying to get out. You will have come to the point where you do not dread the appointment with the pulpit but you seek it, you relish it because God has given you so many things to preach. If this small book has been a help to you, you may want to check out my other course called, Preaching With Power. This course is much longer, a total of 12 thorough lessons with dozens of exercises to develop your preaching skills. To read more about it go to this web site, Http://www.calledtopreach.com

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