Charles Stanley Sermon Notes: Where to Find Them (+ How to Make Your Own)
Dr. Charles Stanley pastored First Baptist Church of Atlanta for nearly fifty years and founded In Touch Ministries, whose broadcasts eventually reached audiences in more than 100 languages. He died in April 2023 at age 90, but his ministry made a deliberate decision decades earlier that matters enormously for anyone searching for Charles Stanley sermon notes today: In Touch systematically recorded, archived, and published his teaching.
That means the archive is not a scattered collection of old tapes — it is one of the best-organized sermon libraries of any twentieth-century preacher, and In Touch continues to broadcast and publish from it. Stanley was also unusually notes-friendly as a preacher. He taught in clear, numbered points, repeated his key principles, and distilled his theology into the famous 30 Life Principles, which makes his sermons some of the easiest to outline of any major preacher.
Below: where the official notes live, and how to build your own study notes from any archived Stanley message.
Where to find official Charles Stanley sermon notes
In Touch Ministries has long published study materials designed to accompany the broadcasts. Start here:
The In Touch Ministries website
Hosts the sermon archive with audio and video, and publishes companion Sermon Notes and study outlines for broadcast messages. These official notes are the gold standard — professionally prepared summaries with the key points and scriptures.
The In Touch devotional and magazine
In Touch's print and digital publications adapt Stanley's teaching into devotional form — useful when you want the substance of a sermon in a five-minute daily format.
The In Touch broadcasts and app
Daily radio and television broadcasts continue to air archived messages, and the app makes the library portable. Broadcast episodes are a convenient audio source if you want to transcribe a message for deeper personal study.
A note on copyright: Charles Stanley's sermons and any official notes remain the intellectual property of In Touch Ministries. Everything below is about making notes for your own study — not about republishing the ministry's content.
How to create your own sermon notes from any Charles Stanley sermon
Official notes exist for many broadcast messages, but the archive is vast and not every sermon has a published outline. Here is the do-it-yourself path for any Stanley sermon you can access:
Get the audio
Pick the message from the In Touch archive or a broadcast episode you have access to. Stanley's messages typically run 25–30 minutes in broadcast format, which keeps the next step fast and cheap.
Transcribe it
Upload the audio and get a full transcript in minutes. A 30-minute Stanley message costs about $0.18 to transcribe at $0.006/minute, and your first minutes are free. His measured, deliberate delivery transcribes with excellent accuracy.
Transcribe the sermonGenerate the outline
Paste the transcript into the free sermon outline generator. Because Stanley preached in numbered points, the AI recovers his structure almost perfectly — main points, sub-points, and scripture references.
Generate sermon notes freeStudy it with the Life Principles lens
Stanley's teaching orbits his 30 Life Principles. As a final step, identify which principle the sermon expresses and add it to the top of your notes — it turns a single sermon into part of a larger, connected body of teaching.
The Life Principles Method
Principle · Passage · Practice · Prayer
This format is tailored to how Stanley actually taught: a timeless principle, grounded in a passage, aimed at obedience, and sealed in prayer. Four boxes on one page:
The one transferable truth of the sermon, stated as a rule for living. Stanley almost always said it explicitly — often more than once.
The anchor text plus any supporting references. Stanley moved through scripture constantly; capture references, look them up later.
What obedience looks like this week. Stanley's constant refrain was 'Obey God and leave all the consequences to Him' — write the specific act of obedience.
A two-line written prayer responding to the message. Stanley taught that listening to God was a discipline; this box is where you practice it.
Tip: Date every sheet. Reviewing a year of Principle-Passage-Practice-Prayer pages is one of the simplest spiritual-growth audits you can do.
Study tips for Charles Stanley's preaching
Study the archive thematically
Because no new sermons are being added, the Stanley archive rewards thematic study — pull three or four messages on prayer, or waiting on God, transcribe them, and outline them side by side. Patterns emerge that a single sermon can't show.
Compare broadcast and full-length versions
Broadcast edits trim messages to fit the program. If a sermon exists in both formats, the full-length version usually contains extra illustrations and application worth noting.
Use his repetition as a highlighter
Stanley repeated what mattered. When your transcript shows the same phrase three times, that phrase belongs at the top of your notes.
Frequently asked questions
Does In Touch Ministries still publish Charles Stanley sermon notes?+
Are Charles Stanley's sermons free to access?+
Can I get a transcript of a Charles Stanley sermon?+
What are the 30 Life Principles?+
Transcribe any sermon free
Five decades of teaching, searchable. Transcribe any archived Stanley message in about five minutes. First 30 minutes free, then $0.006/minute — no subscription, no credit card to start.
Start Transcribing FreeThen turn the transcript into notes with the free sermon outline generator.
Want the bigger picture on Charles Stanley's ministry and most notable messages? See our Charles Stanley sermon archive guide in the Famous Sermons library.
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