T.D. Jakes Sermon Notes: Where to Find Them (+ How to Make Your Own)
Bishop T.D. Jakes founded The Potter's House in Dallas in 1996, after years of ministry in West Virginia, and it has grown into one of the best known congregations in the United States. He is also an author, a conference host, and a film producer, and his message 'Woman, Thou Art Loosed' became a book, a conference series and a film, which is unusual for any sermon.
His preaching is narrative and cumulative. A message often takes a single scene from the Old Testament, slows it down, inhabits the characters, and builds toward a moment of release. The points are not announced in advance and frequently are not numbered at all. The energy rises across the message and the final minutes are often the densest, delivered in a rhythmic, celebratory cadence.
This is why people search for T.D. Jakes sermon notes and come away frustrated with ordinary outline formats. A three point template applied to narrative preaching produces three empty boxes. What you need instead is a way to record an arc, and that is what the method below gives you.
Where to find official T.D. Jakes sermon notes
His teaching is published through his church and his media ministry:
The Potter's House
The Dallas church streams its services and archives recent messages. This is the source for the full-length sermon in its service setting rather than a broadcast edit.
T.D. Jakes Ministries broadcasts and podcast
His messages air on television and release as podcast episodes trimmed to the preaching. Podcast audio is the most convenient source for transcription.
His books and conference material
Several of his sermon themes have been developed into books, and his conferences produce their own sessions and resources. Check the ministry site for study material accompanying a current series.
A note on copyright: T.D. Jakes's sermons and any official notes remain the intellectual property of T.D. Jakes 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 T.D. Jakes sermon
Written outlines for individual sermons are not generally published, so making your own is the practical route. It takes about fifteen minutes:
Get the audio
Save the podcast episode or the audio from the archived service. Prefer the full message: the close is where narrative preaching resolves, and an excerpt often cuts exactly the part that carries the meaning.
Transcribe it
Upload the audio for a full transcript in minutes, first sermon free. A transcript matters more than usual here, because the fastest and most quotable material tends to arrive in the last ten minutes when handwriting has already given up.
Transcribe the sermonGenerate the outline
Run the transcript through the free outline generator. For narrative preaching, treat what it returns as a scene list rather than a point list, and expect to reshape it in the next step.
Generate sermon notes freeRebuild the arc
Move the material into the five rows below. This is the step that turns a flat summary back into the shape the sermon actually had.
Start from a blank templateThe Narrative Arc Method
Scene, Character, Crisis, Turn, Declaration
Narrative preaching moves like a story, so notes on it should move like a story too. Five rows down one page, in the order the sermon travels:
The passage and the situation it puts you inside. One sentence: who is where, and what is happening. Jakes usually establishes this at length, so it is easy to capture.
The person in the text you are being invited to identify with, and the detail about them the sermon dwelled on. That chosen detail is the interpretive key to the whole message.
The pressure in the text and the parallel pressure in the room. Narrative preaching works by naming a real difficulty before resolving it. Write both halves.
What changes, and what God does to change it. This is the theological content of the sermon and the row most likely to be thin in your notes. Fill it in from the transcript if you have to.
The closing line or repeated phrase the message lands on. Write it verbatim. It is doing the work a summary statement does in other preaching.
Tip: Check your Turn row against your Declaration row. If the declaration does not follow from the turn, you have written down the feeling of the ending without the reason for it, and rereading the last section of the transcript will fix it.
Study tips for T.D. Jakes's preaching
Read the whole chapter afterwards
Because the sermon inhabits one scene closely, reading the surrounding chapter afterwards shows you what the sermon selected and what it set aside. That comparison is study, not criticism, and it deepens the message rather than diluting it.
Keep the images in one place
Extended metaphors are the most memorable feature of this preaching and the easiest thing to lose the point of. Keep a running page of image and meaning pairs across sermons, one line each.
Note where the cadence changes
In your transcript, mark where the delivery shifts into the rhythmic close. That marker is a reliable pointer to the sermon's own view of its most important content, and it is visible in text once you know to look.
Frequently asked questions
How do you take sermon notes?+
What is the best sermon note format?+
Should I write during the sermon?+
Do I need a sermon notes template?+
Does The Potter's House publish official T.D. Jakes sermon notes?+
Why is it hard to remember the point of a Jakes sermon?+
Can I share my notes from a Potter's House message?+
Transcribe any sermon free
The best ten minutes come last, when handwriting has stopped. Transcribe the message and keep all of it. Your first full sermon is free — no credit card to start, then $19/month for unlimited sermons.
Start Transcribing FreeThen turn the transcript into notes with the free sermon outline generator.
Want the bigger picture on T.D. Jakes's ministry and most notable messages? See our T.D. Jakes sermon archive guide in the Famous Sermons library.
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