Stumped
September 9, 2026

You sit down to write the sermon for Sunday. It’s Wednesday. Time to get busy.

´ˇ˛Ô»ĺ…
…nothing.
Sermon preparation comes around every week. Unless you start vacation on Monday. Or maybe it’s the pastor’s Sunday off, and you were tapped to “fill the pulpit.”

What do you do when you can’t get started? You come back to it after your train of thought was interrupted, and you don’t know where to go next.

You’re stumped.

You’ve heard of writer’s block. Well, sermon block is also real. Everybody experiences it, no matter how clear we are about God’s call or the truth of Scripture.

The passage is rich with meaning. You may see a couple of approaches.
But you are stuck. It happens, even after more than 40 years of preaching.

I get anxious.

I stare at the screen.

So, I write on paper every thought that comes.

I think on it.

I think of the people who will hear it.

Nothing.

Back to the basics. The most basic activity in sermon preparation is prayer—effective preaching comes through communion with Christ. He may desire our company, so He stops us. To calm our anxious souls. To clear the fog of a full to-do list.

One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the
house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of
the Lord and to seek Him in His temple (Psalm 27.4).

Practical measures can mitigate sermon block. Develop a preaching calendar for a month or longer. The Spirit can lead ahead of time as well as, maybe better than, on the fly. Friends have a history of impromptu preaching, that’s true. But that cannot be an excuse for neglecting the task. Or for being lazy. A sermon plan doesn’t have to be a strait jacket if you keep listening. You can adjust and change as the Spirit sheds more light on the text.

Or your heart.

You may need to set the message aside. Come back to it tomorrow (unless tomorrow is Sunday!).

Preach through an entire book of the Bible. You read a text many times as you study the whole book. And you don’t have to make weekly decisions about which text comes next.

Get more mileage out of your study for more than one sermon or lesson. Prepare a devotional for the elders on wisdom for Monday evening, then preach on wisdom the following Sunday. I tell them when I am getting double duty from a text. “This may sound familiar,” or “We looked at this last week, and it deserves more investigation.”

Find ways to refresh your heart and soul. The work of preaching is never done, so we keep the well full through communion with Christ, study, and waiting.

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord
(Psalm 27.14).

How do you refresh your soul? The Lord gives the message if we wait before Him and meditate on His Word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABOUT

Jeff Blackburn has been proclaiming Christ for over 43 years. He served Friends congregations in Indiana and Kansas. His most recent pastoral assignment was with Greensburg Mennonite Church, Greensburg, Kansas, where he enjoyed nearly 30 years of ministry before being called to coordinate the Friends Preaching Initiative in 2024. He works with aspiring preachers and ministry students on campus, often preaches in churches in the region. He developed three new courses for a preaching certificate offered through 91Ó°ĘÓ, and he created a preaching lab for Barclay students to work on their communication skills.

Jeff grew up in small-town Indiana, attending Quaker Haven Camp every summer before counseling and directing camps. He is a graduate of 91Ó°ĘÓ and Huntington University. He wrote for Adult Friend and The Fruit of the Vine (Barclay Press, Newberg, Oregon) for many years. Jeff enjoys music and singing, although he can’t read music very well. He continues to serve as the moderator for local schools’ spelling bees.

Jeff has written one book, Light at the End of the Funnel (Amazon, 2017) recounting the experience of surviving an EF5 tornado that devastated his town in 2007. He and his wife live in Greensburg where they are near enough to play with their grandchildren on a regular basis. The Lord put it in his heart to help train the next wave of preachers and to encourage active ministers to “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Timothy 4:2).