Podcast

Darryl Wootton – How to Prepare Sermons Week-In and Week-Out

What’s in this Episode?

In today’s podcast, we speak with denominational leader, Darryl Wootton on the great topic of Sermon Preparation.  In the pastorate, we all know Sundays keep coming at us. Darryl talks very openly about the system he used over the years to bring order and structure to his sermon prep time.  His family knows it, and his team knows it.  In all cases, everything else around his time in leading the church takes a back seat to being ready to step into the pulpit on Sunday morning.

 

Read the Transcript:

Dick Hardy 0:00
Hey, friends, welcome to this episode of The Church Tips Podcast. And I am so excited today to be with a really a long time friend, my goodness, Darryl, what have we known each other for like, 25 years, 24 years, something like that.

Darryl Wootton 0:19
Plus, yes.

Dick Hardy 0:20
Yeah, something like that. So well, yeah, yeah, if we go all the way back to that early 90s, midnight, oh, my goodness.

Darryl Wootton 0:26
Yes…

Dick Hardy 0:27
You’re way older, older than I thought you were. But Darryl has again, our families have really enjoyed each other for a number of years.

Dick Hardy 0:37
Darryl serves as a District Superintendent of the Oklahoma District, of the Assemblies of God Churches, and really has a lot of great responsibility for a lot of pastors. So how many pastors do you have in the in the network?

Darryl Wootton 0:52
We have just over 1500 ministers, 455 churches in Oklahoma.

Dick Hardy 0:56
So the question is, Darryl, what are you doing in your spare time?

Darryl Wootton 1:01
Praying.

Dick Hardy 1:01
Praying. .. an awful lot, that’s for sure, yes, but Darryl was so kind to join us today to talk about the subject of sermon preparation. So we’ve got all sorts of folks, viewers that are watching this.

Dick Hardy 1:16
And Sunday keeps coming, and if you have a midweek service, it keeps coming at you. So Darryl is is very well educated and a leader of leaders, and so I want to just drop a quarter in you, buddy…

Darryl Wootton 1:34
Inflation! It’s 50 cents.

Dick Hardy 1:36
50 cents now, okay, I gotta start drop, I gotta drop two quarters in you, but talk to us about sermon preparation.

Darryl Wootton 1:43
Sure. Well, thanks, my brother. I’m just honored to have the invite to join you. Appreciate what you and Jonathan do. Longtime friendship. You’ve had me stay in your home, and so thanks for your graciousness through the years.

Dick Hardy 1:55
In this room!

Darryl Wootton 1:56
Oh, is that right?

Dick Hardy 1:57
Yeah. Well, the viewers know when this was a bedroom, my office was a bedroom, and then there was bedroom next door, and he and his brother-in-law stayed here. We will leave the brother-in-law nameless.

Darryl Wootton 2:07
I have several, yes.

Dick Hardy 2:09
You have several. So, but Darryl was very neat in this room, the brother-in-law in that room, not neat at all. So anyway, we lived to tell about it.

Darryl Wootton 2:19
Yeah, it was fun times, yeah, but yeah, no, thank you. And I love this subject, so thanks for the invite. And I was a youth pastor for about a decade, and so I valued sermon prep, but it was, it was one a week, and so that was manageable.

Darryl Wootton 2:38
Then I became a lead pastor a long time ago, and I had three messages to prepare a week. Suddenly, from one to three, I was never more than four days away from my next message from God.

Darryl Wootton 2:52
And in fact, Dick Foth says that if you, if you spoke three times a week and wrote those sermons. That’s the equivalent of writing nine novels a year. And no one writes nine good novels a year, right?

Dick Hardy 3:07
Operative word… good novels.

Darryl Wootton 3:09
Exactly. But I just, I just really learned early to guard my guard my time with God. Guard my family time second, but third, guard that sermon time. Especially if you’re a lead pastor, no one is going to be able to do that part of the ministry like you. You can delegate some pastoral care.

Darryl Wootton 3:33
You can delegate administration, but when you have the primary role of speaking, you’ve just really got to put cement concrete barriers around that time. And sometimes there’s emergencies.

Darryl Wootton 3:45
A lot of times there’s emergencies, but you have to have a system that will allow you then to shift to guard that, because I haven’t heard many messages that were created late Saturday night that went well Sunday morning. So, so just over the years, Monday was, was my day.

Darryl Wootton 4:05
So it’s just how I’m wired. But I just encourage you to pick a day to start. Mine was Monday, and here’s how I work. So coming off a Sunday, I would try to, I think good sermon prep includes listening to your last message.

Darryl Wootton 4:21
It’s the hardest thing I still do to this day, because we’re our own worst critic, right? And so, but I would try to listen to the last message, and then that would motivate me to get better and spend some time and message prep.

Darryl Wootton 4:40
And I really, I really cherish that time. I turn off the phone, I turn off everything, and I just have a set time I do it. I still do it as a discipline here, and write my write my messages. I still do it on Mondays.

Darryl Wootton 4:54
And so my staff knew that I wasn’t going to do anything else on Monday until I got that message skeleton in the can and message outline. We did small group study guide, so I would do that on Mondays, and then I’d go over it again on Tuesdays, I’d have again set time when I would do that, and then Tuesdays, I could get it to the team, and they could work on slides and, oh, hey, you know what about this for some feedback.

Darryl Wootton 5:24
And I would encourage everyone to have some some kind of feedback during your sermon prep. I want to get alone with God, but my wife has been gracious enough to be my primary feedback. And I, bless her heart.

Darryl Wootton 5:40
She has had to shoot down so many bad ideas, but I thank God she did and but yeah, really feedback there, even with the team. And then by Thursday, pretty much ready to go. And what I discovered with that is, if I’m if I know where I’m going to go, Monday with the outline, then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Darryl Wootton 6:02
There’s some things when I’m driving or I’m listening or I’m reading, it’s like, oh, man, that would be great to insert here. But if I’m waiting till Friday or Saturday, there’s not that gestation period.

Darryl Wootton 6:16
And I always say a good sermon has to be birthed. It can’t be presented, you know, you research and take, take information and assimilate it. But honestly,to the best messages are those that you give birth to. And then, you know, usually my day off was Friday, so I usually had Sabbath.

Darryl Wootton 6:35
But then Saturday, you know, you’re going over it, and Sunday morning, go over it and then, by then, it’s like part of you, if you, if you do that systematically. Stepping back from that, Dick.

Darryl Wootton 6:46
I think one of the important things I learned early on too, as lead pastor, I didn’t do this very well as a youth pastor. I wish I would have, but I would, in the early fall, I would get away, lock myself in, and just say, God, how would you want me to speak to the congregation next year.

Darryl Wootton 7:04
I know in some of our circles that’s viewed as unspiritual, because you’re supposed to be, you know, listening to the Holy Spirit Sunday morning at 6:45am but this is the omniscient Holy Spirit who knows exactly what should be preached next June, as He does, you know, in seven minutes.

Darryl Wootton 7:24
And so I would get alone with God, and I would map it out. And the first few years, I was more topical, and I grew into being an expository preacher. And so I would, I would the Sundays I was going to preach.

Darryl Wootton 7:39
I would line those up, and then here’s where I here’s where I think we need to go as a congregation in the Word of God. And then I would, I would slot those. And so by January, the whole team knew here’s here’s the direction we’re going for the whole year.

Darryl Wootton 7:56
And that kept a lot of unity, because we developed a system where our children and our youth were, we were in the same text, so that students are at the dinner table at home, talking about the things that you know we all did separate venues.

Darryl Wootton 8:14
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So. So I think step one is guard your summer prep time. Number two would be, have someone to refute, veto, clarify, input, just have some feedback that will help you, because you know two or three are better than one… three stranded cord.

Darryl Wootton 8:38
And then I think number three is go, go early, plan early, and, and, and then I would say number four would be when you’re when you’re through, write, write down what was good and what was bad.

Darryl Wootton 9:02
And, and I found that sometimes I would shortcut like illustrations, like I could just say, Oh, John, you know, and the bus, and I could remember that, but, but if you just keep that, you don’t write it out, you know, seven years from now, you’re not going to remember John and the bus, and it may be a really, really good illustration that if you give some meat around it, that would it for sure clarifies for you.

Darryl Wootton 9:30
And maybe us. As we get older, we just get forgetful. But I’ve discovered I wish several times I would have actually, and mine’s manuscripted, but a lot of times illustration. I’d just be real brief on the personal illustrations, and I wish I’d have been a bit more detailed in the documentation of some of that.

Dick Hardy 9:50
Because the recall is just not as good as it used to be. Huh?

Darryl Wootton 9:55
The check engine light that tends to come on the older we get. Yes.

Dick Hardy 9:59
You know, this has been so good. In fact, when you mentioned that piece of, I forgot how you said it, but it’s basically when you were referencing the Saturday Night Special. I had one pastor. I’ll leave him nameless.

Dick Hardy 10:17
You know him. Pastors a very, very large church, significant impact. And I remember him on one Sunday saying this, and I’m thinking, of course, he’s got the the leadership chops at that point in his ministry to say it.

Dick Hardy 10:32
So he’s talking to the church, “Friends, I’ll tell you, this is the way it rolls around here. Either I can be at all your events, all your graduations, all your retirement celebrations, and the wonderful parties that you guys and gals of the church put on. Or I can be ready to stand in this pulpit on Sunday morning.”

Darryl Wootton 10:59
Exactly.

Dick Hardy 11:00
A word from the Lord for the body, and I’ll just say I’m doing the latter. So don’t get all worked up when I don’t show up at all your events. But I thought he just say it straight, but it’s right. It’s it’s right.

Darryl Wootton 11:14
So true.

Dick Hardy 11:15
Be prepared to be prepared.

Darryl Wootton 11:18
I have another brother-in-law, not the one that was together at church, a different one, but he was youth pastoring at the time, and he led worship. And his pastor, impromptu said, how many love the worship?

Darryl Wootton 11:34
And the congregation… Well, he not only lead worships, he preaches, and so let’s just have him come preach tonight. He had no warning. He said, Darryl, I didn’t even have my Bible with me. So he got up.

Darryl Wootton 11:48
He said, What was so crazy is, after I shared whatever was on my heart, several people came up and said, that’s the best sermon you’ve ever delivered. So we can all shoot from our hip occasionally, but if you shoot from your hip perpetually, you’re going to run out of ammunition really quickly, and your people deserve better and and you’re going to repeat yourself.

Darryl Wootton 12:14
I heard Rick Warren say sometime, you know, the best pastor has about three years’ worth of stuff, and then they better start digging in and researching. But let me just make a plug for the expository thing.

Darryl Wootton 12:29
I it was, I became exclusively that and but we would wrap it. So when I would plan, like I had a guy, he wanted me to write a book on how to preach through the Pentateuch. And I kept telling him, no, no. And he said, why won’t you do this?

Darryl Wootton 12:43
I said one word: Leviticus. So, but I in prayer, I felt like, yeah, we’re supposed to go through the Pentateuch and but what we did is we wrapped it up into like eight series. So Genesis, the first part, we just called The Beginnings.

Darryl Wootton 13:02
And so people that don’t know what expository is, don’t know what topical is, they they wouldn’t know the difference. We just had the whole theme and the graphics. But then I went through the second part of Genesis, Faith and Forgiveness with Joseph.

Darryl Wootton 13:17
We did Exodus, we did Road Signs, you know, Out of Egypt and Leviticus, we just called number…. we called the Holiness. Numbers, we called In the Desert. And I found out actually Leviticus was my favorite sermon series in that sermon we did.

Darryl Wootton 13:40
It was great. You know, it’s all about Jesus and but there’s a, there’s a great website, drgeorgeowoodcom. I believe it’s GeorgeOWood.com and when he was still with us, he said, Darryl, someone came and manuscripted all my sermons and put them on the website.

Darryl Wootton 13:57
But he was expository. So he had, I was getting to a certain passage on Leviticus that had to do with bodily emissions. And who wants to preach about bodily emissions when I’ve gone through it?

Darryl Wootton 14:07
So I happened to be at a meeting with Dr Wood, and I said, you know, I’m going to Leviticus, and here’s where I’m at. And he had a great line. He said, Oh, when I got to that chapter, he said, My theme was, God loves you so much, he even cares about your plumbing.

Darryl Wootton 14:23
And so I just ripped that off. I stole that, and we did a plumber sermon during that part. But yeah, no, it’s just really found it giving people a healthy diet of God’s Word. When I go to the buffet, I tend to go to three or four different things, because I like them.

Darryl Wootton 14:41
But when you give your people the entire Word of God, they get a well-rounded, nutritious meal. And that takes a lot of planning. It took me 10 years, but we went through the entire New Testament.

Darryl Wootton 14:54
And several more years we went through we didn’t get through the whole Old Testament. You, you know, there’s a lot of Psalms, but we got through a big chunk of it.

Dick Hardy 15:04
Well, and the reality is, if you’ll preach from the Word systematically, you will preach topics that are in balance to what the Word says. So you’ll preach about money as much as money is talked about.

Darryl Wootton 15:22
That’s correct.

Dick Hardy 15:23
About love, as much as love. You’ll talk about… you know, just go on down the line, and you don’t have to sit there and say, “Well, am I out of balance here? Out of bounds…” just preach what the Word says and and you’ll be right there.

Darryl Wootton 15:35
Dick, in 2020, I was going through Romans, and we were at Romans 13, submit to the government, the week before the shutdown, and see, and I get all these, you know, people with, I don’t know if you remember, everybody had an opinion, and they were also angry.

Dick Hardy 15:52
I thought they were only Oklahoma!

Darryl Wootton 15:54
Oh, man.

Dick Hardy 15:55
Oh man.

Darryl Wootton 15:56
Oh man. Anyway, we but the divine timing of it’s like, “Do you guys remember? You remember that?” And then, and then, we were in Romans 14, when the whole mass controversy, and it was like, yield to the weaker brother. It’s like, man, God just set me up to be in Romans at the right time.

Darryl Wootton 16:12
Yeah, really did. Darryl, this has been, uh, great content. What you just shared with our uh, viewers and listeners today. If they haven’t caught anything, you’ve said, what’s the final hitch up you want them to really drill in on and catch as they really just consider moving forward to make their sermon prep even better than it’s been thus far?

Darryl Wootton 16:35
Go to your calendar, paper form, your app, and punch in the time for next week’s sermon prep, and hit recurring on your calendar and make it weekly. And then guard that time. Let your whole team, let everyone know, “That is my time”.

Darryl Wootton 16:56
They’ll honor it until they need you during that moment, but then if you don’t pick up the phone, then you still honor it. Just guard that message prep time.

Darryl Wootton 17:07
Jesus chose preaching to confound the foolishness and the wisdom of the world through the foolishness of preaching, Paul said.

Darryl Wootton 17:15
And it’s a it’s a great tool, and our churches, that has to be the primary. I thank God for worship. I’m a preacher, so I’m, you know, prejudiced, but preaching has to be the central focus. The Word of God has to be the central focus of our church, worship experience.

Dick Hardy 17:33
Man, so good. Darryl, I can’t thank you enough for spending time with us here on on this podcast. And I want to mention to viewers and listeners that here at Leaders.Church, we’ve created a PDF, very simple PDF, called Sermon Starters. And so just go to Leaders.Church/ss. Very easy, Leaders.Church/ss, it’s a very simple… I don’t know.

Dick Hardy 18:00
I should have the exact number two or three, four pages. It’s not it’s not going to prepare your sermon for you. But it’s going to give you stimulant think, thinking to get that thing on, get off the blank page.

Darryl Wootton 18:13
So good.

Dick Hardy 18:14
And get moving on to your the next sermon that the Lord has for you to impart to the body. Thanks. I really appreciate you being with us today.

Darryl Wootton 18:23
Honored. Bless you.

Dick Hardy 18:24
And our friends who’ve been on the podcast, thank you very much. Make it a great one today and be blessed.

Jonathan Hardy 18:31
Hey, Jonathan, here real quick, before you go. Everything in your ministry rises and falls on your leadership. So investing in your leadership is essential to staying healthy and growing the ministry, and that’s why I want to invite you to join us inside the Leaders.Church membership.

Jonathan Hardy 18:44
This online streaming service for pastors, gives you access to more than 300 videos plus training material to level up your leadership and improve your ministry skills.

Jonathan Hardy 18:51
If you’d like to do that, I want to invite you to go to Leaders.Church/boost. Again, that’s Leaders.Church/boost. Well, thanks again for joining us on the Church Tips Podcast, we’ll look forward to seeing you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai


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