Saw this on an interview with Adam Hamilton:
Preaching: If you were talking to some young pastors about preaching or pastoral ministry and could offer one bit of advice, what would it be?
Hamilton: One of the things I’d say is that because preaching is the single-most-important thing you’re going to do in your ministry-after taking care of your soul and taking care of your family-devote enough time to it. And I think to prepare an excellent sermon, there’s no shortcut.
It just takes time. And it helps if you can outline sermons in advance or at least get a head start on your preaching, even if it’s just for the next six months. Then, if you can, dedicate a minimum of 10 hours-for me it’s 20 hours a week I’m going to spend-reading, researching, studying, praying and writing the sermon. Sometimes more than that. In some church sizes you can’t have more than 10 or 15 hours-but at least use that.
What happens is we tend to be captured by the tyranny of the urgent, so there’s a pastoral care thing or a phone call or something else that comes in or eats away at our preaching time. We can have laity help us in doing congregational care, and if we have to give up some of our preaching time, we can reclaim it at night or reclaim it the next day and reschedule appointments.
But take the time. There’s just no getting around the fact that to preach a great sermon, you’ve got to spend the time reading, studying, praying, writing your message and then reworking it until you’ve got it where it can be its most effective.
Preaching and Politics: An Interview with Adam Hamilton - Sermons & Articles
Saw another article by someone who said to just take an hour or two a week and use other people's sermons (giving them credit) but I can't say that I'm personally fond of that idea. It just seems cheap as if the only thing that goes into preparing a sermon is writing it, rather than the prayer, meditation, talking to God, scripture study, etc. After all, how are you going to learn to prepare good sermons and have a better understanding of scripture if none of the sermons are actually yours and you've never actually done the work?
It's difficult for me to determine how long I take because I don't do everything in one session. I tend to do a few minutes here and a few minutes there, and spend a lot of time thinking about it while doing other things, etc. It seems I spend a lot more on it than physically sitting at the computer writing up an outline or even taking notes on various things. (Though there are times when I do that too.) I get all sorts of ideas of things to add throughout the week in different non-sermon or even non-church-related activities. Sometimes I spend many hours on one sermon and then it turns into multiple sermons and I don't spend as much time the next week or so because I've already done most of the sermon for that week in an earlier week.
A less experienced pastor will probably need to spend a lot more time on research than a pastor who has had 20 years experience and has preached on many of the same passages multiple times, and therefore already has done the research.
