# How to Prepare a Sermon: Start With the Text, Not the Clip Campus pastor Dan talks about coaching preachers: put Scripture before style, keep passion personal, prepare well, and keep saying yes to God through long seasons of waiting. Source: Pray.com — https://www.pray.com/articles/how-to-prepare-a-sermon-start-with-the-text-not-the-clip Author: Adam Mesa Category: Faith & Wisdom Published: 2026-10-22 Last revised: 2026-10-22 --- ## Key takeaways - **Start with Scripture.** Dan says a generation of preachers has put more weight on communication than on the text. - **Keep passion personal.** It grows out of conviction, and it will look different in different people. - **Observe before you read commentary.** Dan coaches preachers through a set order that begins with fresh eyes on the passage. - **Know who is in the room.** Paul and Jesus both spoke to the real needs of the people in front of them. - **Prepare so the Spirit has something to work with.** Dan sees the Holy Spirit as a God of order who highlights what you have studied. - **Keep saying yes in pain.** Dan and the host both spoke about long waits and God's patient preparation. ## Brisket, bait, and finding your own way This episode of the Beyond the Letter podcast opens at a smoker. Dan, campus pastor at Life Pacific University, started grilling during COVID. He moved from a pellet grill to a Big Green Egg and a PK grill, entered steak competitions, and now cooks for weddings and events on a 250 gallon offset smoker. His business is called Kindred, a name his wife and sister helped him find, because barbecue has a way of uniting people. Dan sees a pattern between brisket and church planting. Everyone has an opinion on how to trim, wrap and smoke a brisket, and everyone has an opinion on how to start a church. He said you learn brisket by making brisket. Some practices are established, but his best advice to anyone building a church is to hear from the Lord, hold to the foundational practices and run with it. The host, Sammy, added that leaders often make their own story the gold standard and hand it to everyone else. Both men turned to Jesus' words about fishers of men. The pressure of saving people belongs to the Lord, so the work is to cast the net with obedience. Different waters call for different bait, and what works in the South may not work in Southern California. ## Preaching Scripture, not only communicating Sammy asked Dan what the biggest clarity issue is among new preachers. Dan said the problem starts with the question, because it treats them as communicators when they are preaching Scripture. As Dan put it, "We have overemphasized the gifting of communication without emphasizing the power of just scripture." He described a generation that is engaging and entertaining on stage but often lacks biblical depth. He recalled a guest on his own podcast, Charles Metcalf, comparing it to cooking: we have fussed over the plating and neglected the food. Dan still works on cadence and style with the preachers he coaches, but he wants them to have something to say first. That is why he started the Preacher's Cohort, a three or six month coaching program, and he said it has been humbling to see senior pastors sign up. Sammy pointed to [Hebrews 4:12](/bible/web/hebrews-4/#v12), where the word of God is living and active. His concern was that a preacher can read a verse or two and then give a pump-up speech, when the text itself is what lasts. ## Passion that comes from conviction Sammy described three ways a message can go wrong: clear but flat, loud but unclear, or warm and passionate with no Bible in sight. Dan said this fits the idea of zeal without knowledge, and a preacher needs both. He also urged caution about what we call passion. He has heard a professor move him to tears over a Greek participle, because the professor believed what he was saying. Dan said passion comes from personal conviction and then shows up through the preacher's own personality. A quiet preacher is not necessarily a cold one. When his own passion wanes, Dan checks three things: himself, the people and his process. He may be tired, overwhelmed or carrying sin. He may have lost connection with the people he preaches to. Or he may have no clear way of working, so he only prepares when inspired. He tells his students that people in the room are facing cancer, a financial crisis or a marriage on the rocks, and they do not care that the preacher knows Greek. When a preacher loses touch with them, Dan said, "You can tend to try to be more impressive than impactful." ## What Jesus' sermon shows a preacher Dan noted that Paul wrote letters to churches he knew, addressing specific needs, and that a good way to think about a sermon is to name the needs of your people and speak to them. He then turned to the Sermon on the Mount. > Seeing the multitudes, he went up onto the mountain. When he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and taught them, saying, > > ([Matthew 5:1-2](/bible/web/matthew-5/#v1), WEB) Dan observed that Jesus taught crowds as well as disciples, so he was speaking to people at every level of commitment. The sermon begins with blessing and moves to hard words about lust and hatred, and it addresses both kinds of listener. Jesus also sat down, which Dan reads as posture fitting the tone of the message. Dan took the birds and flowers literally, since the crowd was sitting in a field, and he asked preachers to find the birds and flowers in their own setting. Sammy then pointed to what follows, when Jesus comes down from the mountain. > Behold, a leper came to him and worshiped him, saying, “Lord, if you want to, you can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I want to. Be made clean.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. > > ([Matthew 8:2-3](/bible/web/matthew-8/#v2), WEB) Sammy noted that Jesus touched the man, and that a leper was among the most marginalized people of the time. The passage moves from teaching to action, and the two belong together. Dan added that a good question for anyone reading the Gospels is what a passage tells us about Jesus, even indirectly. ## Observe the text first Dan said he is more interested in giving a preacher something to say than in how to say it. He begins with a starting point, which may be a theme or a prompt from God, a book of the Bible, or a need or desired outcome in the community. Then he moves through a chosen passage, observation, a structural outline, research and commentary, illustrations, and finally the sermon outline. He holds that observation matters most. His picture is four ways of travelling to Las Vegas. From an airplane you see the shape of the desert and the freeway. From a car you see more, and on foot more still. Crawling, you would notice bugs, rocks and small animals. After he walked back to campus from an oil change, he noticed lavender bushes along a street he drives by almost every day. He applies the same slowing down to a passage. Commentaries come after that, he said, so that you are not borrowing someone else's thought before you have your own. If you use another person's work, cite it. Illustrations come after the text too. Sammy described preaching Genesis 7 and noticing that the account of the ark mentions no rudder or wheel, which spoke to how we grab for control in a storm. Dan summed up the problem plainly: "It's all about order, and we have disorder in our process." ## Preparation gives the Spirit room Dan said he believes the Holy Spirit can hand a preacher a message on the spot, but he thinks the Holy Spirit is organized. In his experience the Spirit usually emphasizes and highlights what the preacher has already studied. One service may bring one point forward and the next service another. He also pointed to the temptation in the wilderness. The enemy quoted Scripture, and Jesus answered with Scripture, which suggests a store of it ready to hand. Sammy agreed that the Spirit's leading in worship is real, but he warned against using it as an excuse for little preparation. Dan's advice to younger preachers was to fall in love with the work, even when it is hard. ## Waiting through pain Near the end Dan spoke about suffering. He said the church needs a better theology of pain, because the longer you walk with the Lord, the more seasons of pain you meet. He and his wife have been trying to have a baby for over two years. When he shared that publicly, about ninety people wrote to say they had faced infertility too, one for twelve years. He said he does not know why God uses painful seasons. He does know that he keeps saying yes to Jesus in them, and he spoke of promises from when he was seventeen, an intern in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that he is only now beginning to see. "If it hasn't happened yet, God's still working." He encouraged listeners to reread the prophetic words spoken over their lives. Sammy added that pain is part of a fallen world, and that Jesus promises to be with us in it. He offered one more line to hold onto: "We want days and hours, God prepares in months, years, and decades." ## What this means for you You do not need to be a pastor to use Dan's advice. Before you open a commentary or a devotional, read a passage slowly and write down what you see. Then ask who it was written to and what it shows about Jesus. If you teach, lead a group or speak to a team, ask who is really in the room and what they are carrying this week. And if you are in a long season of waiting, ask whether you have gone back to what God has said to you, and whether you can keep saying yes today.