The Five Parts of a Sermon: A Structural Anatomy

# The Five Parts of a Sermon

A sermon has a skeleton, and once you can see it you can diagnose almost any message that is not working. The parts are not a formula to be filled in; they are the functions a sermon has to perform. Different traditions name them differently, but the work being done is the same.

What are the five parts of a sermon?

The standard anatomy, in order:

1. Introduction. Earn attention and raise the question the text answers.
2. Text and context. Read the passage and place it, so the congregation knows what they are hearing.
3. Body. Two to four movements that develop the one idea.
4. Application. What this means for the people in the room this week.
5. Conclusion. Land the idea and stop.

Each has a distinct job and a distinct way of failing.

Introduction. Its job is not to be clever. It is to make people want the answer to a question they did not know they had when they sat down. It fails by being long, by being about you, or by announcing the structure ("today we will look at three things") before anyone has a reason to care.

Text and context. Read the passage aloud. Then tell them what they need in order to hear it correctly: who wrote it, to whom, what came before, what the words meant in their setting. This part fails in two opposite directions. Skipping it turns the sermon into a talk with a verse attached. Overdoing it turns it into a lecture, and the congregation waits politely for the sermon to start.

Body. The movements. Each one should advance the single idea rather than restate it. Two strong movements beat four weak ones every time. This part fails when the points are parallel in wording but not in logic, when a point exists because three sounded better than two, or when there is no visible transition between them.

Application. Specific, this week, for people who are actually in the room: the person who is exhausted, the person who is not sure they believe it, the person who has done the thing the text names. It fails by being general ("we should all love more"), by being aimed at people who are not present, or by arriving only in the last ninety seconds.

Conclusion. Say the idea one last time, in its strongest form, and stop. It fails by circling, by introducing new material, or by three false endings. Write the final two sentences and preach those.

Many traditions add a formal blessing after the conclusion, which is a distinct element of the service rather than part of the sermon proper. Our collection of benedictions has usable texts if that is your practice.

What makes a good sermon introduction?

Four things, and none of them are a joke.

Tension. A good introduction opens a gap: something that does not fit, a question the text is about to answer, a real situation with no obvious way through. Tension is what makes people lean in. Resolution too early is what makes them stop listening.

Concreteness. A specific person in a specific situation beats an abstraction every time. "A woman I met on Tuesday" holds attention that "many people today" never will.

Brevity. Most introductions are twice as long as they need to be. If you can be into the text in ninety seconds, do it.

Connection to the actual idea. The most common failure is an excellent opening story that has nothing to do with the sermon. The congregation remembers the story and forgets the point, which is a worse outcome than a boring introduction.

Practical test: write your introduction last, after you know what the sermon is. It is nearly impossible to open well before you know where you are going.

How do you end a sermon?

Decide the last sentence before you write anything else in the conclusion, then work backward to it.

What a conclusion has to do:

• Restate the one idea in its most compressed and forceful form.
• Point at the response without moralizing. What does taking this seriously look like on Tuesday?
• Return to the image, story, or question from the introduction if you have one. This is the single most reliable way to make a sermon feel finished.
• Stop. No new material, no new text, no summary of everything you said.

The most common ending failures:

• Circling the runway. Three sentences that each sound like the last sentence.
• The apology. "I know I have gone long." You have now made the length the takeaway.
• The bolted-on invitation. If your tradition includes a response or an invitation, prepare it as carefully as the rest. An improvised close undoes a carefully built sermon.
• Ending on the abstraction. End on the concrete: the image, the person, the specific act.

A practical discipline: memorize the last two sentences. Not the whole conclusion, just the last two. Preachers who do this stop running long, because there is a defined stopping point they are moving toward.

What is a sermon big idea?

One sentence, in the present tense, that says what the sermon claims. Sometimes called the proposition, the main point, or the controlling idea.

Tests of a real big idea:

• A member could repeat it in the parking lot without having taken notes.
• It is a claim, not a topic. "Prayer" is a topic. "Prayer is how God changes the person praying" is a claim.
• It comes from the text, not from a subject you wanted to address that the text merely touches.
• Every movement in the body serves it. If a point does not advance it, the point is a different sermon.
• It is one sentence. If it requires a conjunction and a subordinate clause to survive, you likely have two ideas competing.

Writing the big idea first is the highest-leverage habit in sermon preparation. It is also the most commonly skipped one, and skipping it is why a sermon can be full of true and well-researched material and still leave a congregation unable to say what it was about.

If you want to see the anatomy in a completed message, our sermon outlines show the structure passage by passage, and Psalm 23 is a good one to start with because the text is familiar enough that the structure is what you notice. For how these parts vary by sermon type, see the four main types of sermons.

Using the parts as a diagnostic

Once a sermon is preached, the parts are a checklist for reviewing it. Read a transcript of the delivered version and mark where each part begins and ends. You will usually find one of three things: the introduction ran three minutes longer than it felt, the application is a single paragraph near the end, or two of your body movements are making the same point in different words.

None of that is visible from the manuscript, because the manuscript is what you intended. It is visible from the transcript, which is what you did. If you record your sermons, our transcription tool will give you the text. If you do not record them, that is the first change to make, because the recording is worth more than anything else on this list.