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How Long Does It Take To Write A Sermon? 4 Findings

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Seedbed Preaching CollectivePreaching is the most visible aspect of pastoral ministry, and sermon preparation is a focal point of a preaching pastor’s workweek. In my own ministry, sermon preparation takes a lot of time and energy. Painfully I confess that it takes me a long time to prepare a lousy sermon, let alone a respectable one. As a preacher I have occasionally wondered how much time other pastors spend preparing their sermons.

In search of an answer, I conducted a survey (non-scientific) of 36 pastors from across the United States & Canada, from a variety of denominations, and various church sizes. Twenty-five pastors responded (a response rate of 69%) to my ten question survey about sermon preparation, and here are some of my preliminary findings.

  1. Pastors spend an average of 11.5 hours per week on sermon preparation.

The average pastor in this survey reported spending 11 hours and 30 minutes in sermon preparation per week. Individual responses varied greatly, however. The number of pastors who reported spending more than 20 hours per week was equal to the number of pastors who reported spending less than 5 hours per week in sermon preparation.

Some pastors wished they had more time to prepare. “As a solo pastor,” one pastor commented, “I wish I had more time to devote to sermon prep, but there are so many other responsibilities.” Others, however, said they have made the intentional decision to limit sermon preparation time because they feel called primarily to the task of equipping the saints for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4). Still several other pastors said that experience in ministry has allowed them to dramatically reduce the time they spend in sermon preparation over the years.

  1. Pastor are always thinking about their sermon.

On a recent Saturday night, my daughter asked me if I was done working on my sermon. I said, “Yes … well, actually, no. I won’t really be done working on this sermon until after the last service tomorrow.” In my case, a sermon is fluid, and never fully complete until preached. A pastor doesn’t preach because the sermon is ready: a pastor preaches because it’s time to preach.

Regardless of how much time they may spend in formal sermon preparation, the sermon seems to always be in the back of the pastor’s mind. A common theme in the comments from the pastors in this study was that the sermon “lives in my head all week long.” Pastors reported that the time they spend reading books, reading scripture, praying, socializing, and even just pondering the sermon while doing other things may be an equally important facet of sermon preparation. One pastor said. “The sermons actually can be written in just a few hours… a lot of the time is just spent studying and thinking until the ‘light’ turns on.”

  1. Does the average person know how much time sermon preparation requires?

I asked the pastors, “Do people in your church understand how much time goes into preaching?” None of the pastors selected the option, “Yes, my church absolutely knows how much time goes into sermon preparation.” However, 52% of these respondents said many people, while only 8% of respondents thought most people know how much work it takes to preach every week.

Not surprisingly, the more time a pastor spends in sermon preparation, the more likely they were to report “people do not realize how much time it takes to preach every week.” A full 40% of pastors in this survey said they do not think most people realize how much time they spend preparing to preach every week, and these pastors reported an average of 26% more time in sermon preparation than their peers. Additionally, only two pastors in this study reported spending over 20 hours in sermon preparation every week, and both of them answered that people do not understand how much work goes into sermon preparation.

  1. What if a sermon was in a syllabus?

The old rule of thumb for sermon preparation I heard in my early years of ministry was “an hour in the study for every minute in the pulpit,” but is that an accurate expectation? In search of a more accurate rubric, I looked to Houghton College’s “time on task” rubric which helps faculty determine how much time it will take a student to complete various assignments. An ORAL PRESENTATION has an anticipated workload of 4 hours of preparation for every minute of live presentation (therefore, 100 hours of preparation for a 25-minute sermon). A RESEARCH PAPER, has an anticipated workload of “1.5 hours per finished page” and a JOURNAL or REFLECTION PAPER has an anticipated workload of “0.5 hours per each page of writing.” Based on my average sermon that would mean 28.5 hours of preparation for a research paper, or 9.5 hours for a reflection paper, which is closer to the average hours the pastors in this survey reported. I think this rubric is useful, if for nothing else, in recognizing the unique challenge of preaching every Sunday.

Next Steps

Thom S. Rainer’s research has found a correlation between sermon preparation time and overall church health: “Simply stated,” he says, “when the pastor spends more time in the Word, the church tends to be healthier.”[i] And it makes sense to me. There are many things a pastor can do that will have a bigger impact on individuals, but few things a pastors does will have an impact on as many people every week as preaching. A student can fill the pages or time required for an assignment, but most professors know the difference between a student who is giving a college-level presentation and a student who is just filling space. Likewise, a pastor can get up every Sunday and speak for 20, 30, even 40 minutes, but most churches can tell the difference between a pastor who has prepared to preach and someone who is just talking. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

So if the average pastor spends 10 to 15 hours per week in sermon preparation, what are they doing with all of that time? How much time do pastors spend studying, writing, outlining, and editing,? In my next article, I will share some of my findings from this survey about what activities makes up a pastors sermon preparation time, and how pastors might be able to maximize their preparation time.

© Steve Dunmire 2015


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I am now an author for the Seedbed Preaching Collective, and this article was written for the Preaching Collective page.  Click here to read it on the Seedbed Preaching Collective, and to find other Preaching Collective content.
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Dr. Steve Dunmire is Director of the Office of Ministry Resources at Houghton College (Houghton, NY). He is an ordained pastor in the Wesleyan Church, and was a pastor in Buffalo-Niagara region churches of New York State for 12 years. Steve also serves as director and primary instructor for Houghton College’s Equipping for Ministry program, which provides non-traditional classes for adults seeking ordination and personal enrichment. Steve is married to Tammy, and they have four children. For more content visit SteveDunmire.com, or follow him on twitter at @DrSteveDunmire

[i] http://thomrainer.com/2012/07/pastors_and_time_in_sermon_preparation_some_good_news/

10 Ways to Keep the Pastor You Love

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“Being a pastor was SO much easier than what I’m doing now,” said no former pastor ever. Not one.IMG_9464c Instead, I meet pastors every month who say to me, “I thought I knew what this would be like, but being a pastor is so much harder than I expected, and most people have no idea.”

I am not writing this for pastors. This would be a very different article if pastors were my intended audience, but I am writing this for lay people, board members, district superintendents, and anyone who loves his or her pastor.

Here are ten simple things you and your church can do to help your pastor feel fulfilled and appreciated in pastoral work, and to try to hold on to your beloved pastor.

  1. Think Twice Before Criticizing

Someone is always mad at your pastor about something. Seriously. You cannot please all of the people all of the time, but having some people mad at them all of the time is the harsh reality many pastors live with. And it can wear a good pastor out. There are angry emails, scathing remarks in the church foyer, and people who will snub you in public once they have left your church.

On the night I was ordained, Dr. Earle Wilson said to us, “If you fail, you’ll be criticized. If you succeed, you may be even more criticized.” Some studies have shown that 40% of pastors experience significant conflict with someone in their church at least once every month. In my years as a pastor, I cannot think of a time when at least one person wasn’t angry at me about something. Many pastors have said it’s a death by a thousand cuts. To say “pastors just need to have thick skin” is both flippant and it fails to take into account how stress makes a person more likely to suffer from depression, more susceptible to temptation, and also makes a person more vulnerable to illness. Every time someone chooses to leave your church, or complains about a sermon, or ignores you out in the community, or sends an anonymous letter, or feels the need to “speak my mind,” it takes a little bit of the air out of your pastor’s tires. Every week I meet with pastors who carry wounds from years of serving cranky Christians, and I look in the eyes of good pastors whose souls bear the cumulative damage of the relentless criticism and anger vented toward pastors. I can assure you that having a callused pastor is much worse than having a pastor who takes criticism and attacks personally.

Do you love your pastor? Think twice before criticizing, and if you are going to be critical about something, make sure it’s for good reasons (and be calm and kind as you do so). Assume that your pastors’ critics are taking shots at them, even if you don’t see it or hear about it.

  1. Housing: Be the Best Landlord in Town.

If you provide a parsonage, be the best landlord in town. I facilitated a Clergy Tax Event last year where we were talking about how to determine the “Fair Rental Value” of the parsonage, and one person in the group asked, “Do you take into account the fact that no one else would actually want to live there?”

As a rule of thumb, keep the parsonage nicer than is necessary. Never let “good enough” be the standard. Most pastors I know are shy about asking for work to be done on the parsonage, but if you want to keep the pastor you love, you won’t wait for the pastor to ask for work to be done on the parsonage. The parsonage is your pastor’s home, but it is the church’s house. You cannot control everything that happens in the life of the church, but you can make sure your pastor has a comfortable home – a haven to which your pastor can retreat at the end of every day.

Of course, pastors who own their own homes tend to have longer pastorates than those who live in parsonages. Homeownership provides the chance for a family to live where they want in a house that suits their needs, and a mortgage has a way of “encouraging” people stay in one place longer. If you have a pastor you love, be an advocate for helping them move from a parsonage into their own home.

  1. Care for the Pastor’s Family, and for your Pastor as a Person

In some ways, caring for the pastor’s home is a big way of carrying for his family (see point #9), but it can go beyond that. Whenever I hear that a colleague is leaving a church, I always pray that their spouse and children get to hear how much their spouse or parent has meant to the congregation as pastor. When I left my last church, I was so touched by the number of people who said they were going to miss watching my kids grow up, and the people who gave gifts to my children. The gifts and cards people gave my children meant twice as much as the ones they gave me. One family gave my kids money for college every year on their birthdays, and became like surrogate grandparents for our children. It makes it harder to entertain leaving when people in the congregation have truly become like family to you … and especially to your children and spouse (I’ll write more about this in my next post).

  1. Vacation Time & Weekends Off

Most full-time pastors work 6-7 days per week (yes, I know of a few lazy full-time pastors who work 4-5 days per week, but those are the exception, not the rule). So if a pastor has a 6-day workweek and only gets 2 weeks off per year, the pastor will work 302 days per year. By comparison, a person working a 5-day work week with 2 weeks off who will work 250 days per year. That is an extra 52 workdays per year for your pastor! If you give that same pastor 4 weeks of vacation, the pastor will still work 38 more days than the person who has a 5-day workweek and two weeks of vacation!

I am a big proponent of hardworking pastors getting AT LEAST three or four weeks of vacation not because they deserve MORE time off than their lay people, but because even with “more” vacation time they will still work more days per year than the average lay person.

  1. Salary: Give Your Pastor Raises

Finances are always a factor, and every pastor would be able to work for free in an ideal world, but you can’t afford to do your job for free, and neither can your pastor. People often have the idea that a pastor ought to make sacrifices for the sake of the ministry, and therefore they ought to make less than they deserve. Many pastors, likewise, know the financial needs of the church better than their lay leaders, and will decline raises or even voluntarily take pay cuts for the sake of the ministry. Even if the pastor declines the raise, it is important for morale that you are generous in what you offer. A cost of living increase (at the least) should be offered as standard operating procedure every year for your pastor.

As I was writing this, I realized something: the only way I ever received anything more than a cost of living increase in my years as a pastor was by moving to a new ministry. I never thought of it that way until now, and I never went looking for those moves, but they always found me. Again, I’m not writing this as career advice to pastors, but as a word of advice to congregations who want to keep the pastor they love: if you don’t give your pastor a raise, someone else will.

What can you do when there isn’t money in the budget for a raise? In the current financial climate, many workplaces and institutions have experienced years when raises weren’t an option, or even years when painful cuts were necessary. Your pastor will understand better than anyone (and sometimes before anyone else) if a raise isn’t possibly because of the budget. I have heard of churches who told their pastoral staff, “There isn’t room in the budget for a raise this year, so instead we are giving everyone an extra week off this year.”

Pastors enter the ministry for the call, not for the money. Pastors pay the same price for milk, gas, and coffee as anyone else, though. Make it happen, somehow, someway, and be creative if you must. If you don’t give your pastor a raise when it is deserved, eventually someone else will.

  1. Give Your Pastor Tools To Get the Job Done

Your pastor’s reimbursement account is not part of the pastor’s compensation: it is the tools the pastor needs to get the job done. Reimburse the pastor’s ministry mileage, provide a pastoral expense account, and a budget for buying books. An adequate computer, office space, books, mileage, and reimbursed expenses is not a luxury – it is the tools your pastor needs to be effective. Don’t ask your pastor to make bricks without straw.

  1. You Want Your Pastor to Be Flexible, so Give Your Pastor Flexibility

Take in to account how much of a pastor’s ministry conflicts with family life on weekends, evenings, and holidays. Free your pastor up to attend school functions, and to use the flexibility of the pastorate to be there for family during “normal work hours” because weekends and holidays are so often crowded by ministry responsibilities.. The old saying fits some pastors who are “invisible for six days and incomprehensible on the seventh,” but most of my friends who are pastors work too hard, not too little. Flexibility is a free benefit your church can afford to give your pastor.

  1. Be Dependable

When a pastor leaves a church, the hardest people to leave are the dependable ones. Make it hard for your pastor to think about leaving by your actions: be dependable, be consistent in your attendance, and be the type of person of whom your pastor can say, “We’re building with people like that.” When workers are not dependable, and members are sporadic in their attendance, it doesn’t take much for the grass to look greener somewhere else. Do you have a pastor you love? Then be there, and be dependable.

  1. Send Compliments Over Your Pastor’s Head

Your pastor probably reports to a board, elders, a bishop, or a district superintendent, so make sure you tell them that you love your pastor. And do it now, before those types of people ask you what you think. The chronic complainers will not hesitate to go over your pastor’s head with their criticisms, so you should not hesitate to go over your pastor’s head when you have a pastor you love. It will be refreshing to everyone involved.

  1. Send Specific, Handwritten Notes to say, “Thanks.”

In an age of tweets and text messages, a hand-written note is a lost art, and a rare treasure. Here’s a little secret: many pastors have a file of handwritten notes they’ve received over the years. A handwritten note is most likely the sort of thing your pastor will not quickly discard. Express your appreciation in writing and it will stand out.

Research has shown that possibly the greatest predictor of career satisfaction for pastoral ministry is for pastors to know that they are making a difference. Don’t be vague when you say thanks. Be specific. Don’t just say, “Thanks for all you do.” Say thanks for things your pastor does, or characteristics your pastor has, and ways your pastor does things.

Did you learn something you didn’t know during your pastor’s message, or find yourself thinking about it days later, or did God speak to you in a powerful way through a message? Then tell your pastor what it was, specifically. Tell your pastor, “That sermon helped me understand ….” or even, “That story your shared in your sermon really helped me see ….”

Other examples are:

  • “Thank you for taking time away from your family to be with ours in a difficult time.”
  • “I know that situation was difficult, and I appreciate the way you handled it.”
  • “I can tell you put a lot of time and preparation into your messages, and I just wanted you to know that it shows.”

Pastors are willing to endure a lot if they know they are making a difference. So show them. Tell them. I have never once heard a pastor say, “My congregation expresses too much appreciation to me.” Write it out with pen on paper and put it in the mail.

My Point

I spend an average of almost 30 hours per week with pastors and ministry leaders. Believe me or not, but if any of these ten things seems like “too much,” or if you neglect these ten things, I guarantee the pastor you love will leave sooner or later. On the other hand, I don’t know of any pastor who would casually leave a church that does these ten things consistently.

What do you think?

What did I miss? Anything you would add or take away from this list?

© Steve Dunmire 2014
Photograph also © Steve Dunmire 2014
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 Dr. Steve Dunmire is an ordained pastor, a commissioned ministry coach, and Director of the Office of Ministry Resources at Houghton College (Houghton, NY). He is also the director and an instructor of Houghton’s “Equipping for Ministry” program offering non-degree courses for ordination & personal enrichment.

Serving in Obscurity

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Every church I ever served had an inferiority complex when I arrived. One was dealing with the fallout of a recent church split. The next church greeted me by asking, “What did you do to get sent here? We retire more people than social security!” In my third church, I followed a difficult case where my predecessor was removed by the denomination for a personal indiscretion. Not one of those situations was healthy when I started on day one, all were deeply wounded, and I knew serving those churches meant serving in so-called obscurity. In a small town, in a suburban neighborhood, or in the ghetto, any one of us can find ourselves operating in obscurity where we feel overlooked, forgotten, insignificant, and unimportant. I have many friends who serve in so-called obscurity, and I spent many years there myself.

That’s why I love Gregory of Nyssa.

Gregory was appointed by his older brother to a small, out of the way town hardly anyone had heard of. Nyssa. Gregory was not thrilled. Serving in obscurity, in an out-of-the-way place was not the kind of career Gregory had in mind. He protested, but his older brother revealed that this was an intentional appointment. His brother had chosen obscurity for him on purpose, explaining that he didn’t want Gregory to gain notoriety by serving in a prominent location, but to bestow distinction on that obscure place by the way he conducted himself there.

Time in obscurity might be a prerequisite for significant responsibility for some leaders. Obscurity is a lifetime calling for some. Though a place appears unimportant at first glance, it can be the ideal conditions to hear the voice of God, and can be the crucible where God can refine our character.

So do you find yourself in an out-of-the-way place, where you’re sure that no one really notices what you’re doing, or that you’re really not making a difference? Don’t distinguish yourself based on where you serve, but distinguish your place by how you serve there.

Oh, and you can meet a lot of wonderful people in those out-of-the-way places.

“Whoever can be trusted with very little
can also be trusted with much,
and whoever is dishonest with very little
will also be dishonest with much.”
Luke 16:10, NIV

© Steve Dunmire 2014
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 Dr. Steve Dunmire is an ordained pastor, a commissioned ministry coach, and Director of the Office of Ministry Resources at Houghton College (Houghton, NY). He is also the director and an instructor of Houghton’s “Equipping for Ministry” program offering non-degree courses for ordination & personal enrichment.