How to become a 10/10 Preacher: A Step-by-Step Guide
The Homiletics Course You Wish You Took in College (and How to Leverage AI to Help)
By Jon-Michael Sherman
Whether you’re just starting to preach or you’ve been doing it for years, the truth is: everyone has room to grow. Most preachers in America, if we’re being honest, are only a 4 or 5 out of 10 at their best. That’s a huge problem — because preaching is the #1 and #2 reason people choose to attend a church.
It’s also your most important, and most difficult, responsibility.
So how do you go from a shaky beginner to a confident, Spirit-empowered, 10/10 preacher?
Let’s break it down step-by-step.
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First, what exactly is a 10/10 sermon?
A 10/10 sermon is biblically faithful, doctrinally sound, internalized (not stuck on your notes), presented authentically and confidently, engaging to real people, and exegeting both the text and the culture. It clearly proclaims the Gospel and offers next steps.
Simple enough, right?
Not exactly. But it’s absolutely attainable. Here’s how.
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1. Biblical Hermeneutic > Eisegesis
Start in the Bible — every day.
Your preaching must come from the Bible, not your imagination.
Ask yourself:
Am I faithfully pulling meaning out of the text (exegesis)?
Or am I forcing my own ideas onto it (eisegesis)?
If you want to be a Spirit-led preacher, you need to be Bible-filled. Reading Scripture daily sharpens your hermeneutic, helps you preach truth, and models for your church how they should handle the Word of God too.
How AI Helps:
Upload your passage into SermonDone AI sermon assistant. It can help you break down the structure of the passage, cross-reference related texts, and check whether your interpretation aligns with historic commentaries and original-language insights.
It’s not a substitute for study — but it is a study companion.
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2. Orthodoxy > Epistemological Narcissism
Build your preaching on historically Christian doctrine.
The great temptation for young preachers (under 40) today is to keep their applied post-modernistic or relativistic worldview even after following Christ. Jesus is not a life-coach, he is your Lord, which means changing your epistemological approach.
Truth isn’t subjective.
You must humbly submit yourself to the historic Christian faith — the truth of the moral law (the Ten Commandments), the Gospel, the Nicene Creed, and the authority of Scripture. Major on the majors, minor on the minors. Ensure you are being faithful to closed handed doctrinal issues.
If you’re not confident in what is true, you will never preach with conviction.
You must be persuaded to persuade. You must know the difference between orthodoxy and heresy. Watch your life and doctrine closely.
Before you preach regularly, make sure you’re deeply rooted in the faith. Paul had to wait and study before preaching — maybe you need a season of study too. Why? So that you develop a lifestyle of theological learning!
The best preachers never stop learning.
How AI Helps:
You can prompt SermonDone to study doctrinal themes across church history, identify where different denominations align or diverge, or even summarize the core doctrines of the Nicene Creed, Reformed theology, or Wesleyan tradition — all in seconds.
It’s like having a seminary research assistant in your pocket.
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3. Planned + Prepared > Last Minute
Patterns Matter.
Without a 12–24 month sermon calendar, your preaching will become reactive, redundant, and shallow.
Your goal is to disciple and catechize your congregation, not just react to the news cycle (although there are times for that) or whatever you’re personally going through.
Plan a mix of:
• Books of the Bible series
• Felt-need series addressing cultural issues
• Topical discipleship series
• Pastoral series about internal church needs
• Seasonal Advent/Lent series
Planning doesn’t stifle the Spirit — it makes room for deeper prayer, creativity, and research.
If you’ve never created a 12-month preaching calendar, start by asking your peers to share theirs — but don’t just ask what they preach, ask why they scheduled it that way. You’ll gain valuable insights into the rhythms of the church calendar, including high-impact growth windows (seasons when visitors are more likely to attend) and strategies for navigating slower attendance months. You’ll also begin to understand the deeper philosophy behind sermon planning and how it can shape the spiritual formation of your church.
How AI Helps:
You can build an entire sermon series calendar with SermonDone. Input your preferred themes (Advent, book studies, felt needs, etc.), and it can generate sermon series structures, titles, and even suggested texts. It can help you balance theology over time, avoid topic repetition, and ensure a full spiritual diet for your church.
Then, week-by-week, it can help you outline and draft with consistency.
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4. Pre-Written Orthodoxy > Originality
Preach better preachers sermons before you find your unique voice.
When you’re starting out, and even later when you are incredibly busy, it’s perfectly okay (even wise) to preach through other pastors’ sermons.
Young preachers naturally sound like their mentors — and that’s fine for a season. You’re building your confidence, your muscle memory, and your theological grounding.
When a baby deer takes its first steps, it’s a little awkward — and honestly, starting to preach can feel the same way. You get in your own head, worrying about how your content sounds and how your delivery looks. The insecurity can make it even harder.
But when you have a home-run sermon ready to go, everything shifts. You stop obsessing over yourself and start focusing on serving the congregation. A few great Sundays under your belt, and suddenly your confidence starts to soar.
Let’s be real: some of the best sermons have already been written. And here’s your permission — preach them.
Many pastors want you to use what they’ve shared. That’s why they give it away. Just be sure to cite your sources and honor the work.
This is what mentorship looks like. Paul said, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” In other words — mimic me while I mimic Him. It’s the same reason he had Timothy read his letters aloud: to be able to preach truth boldly.
I would rather be orthodox than original.
Originality is overrated. Especially when you are a starting out. Decide to be humble and secure enough to learn from the best.
If you want to write great sermons, start reading great sermons.
How AI Helps:
Paste a sermon transcript from a trusted preacher into SermonDone. Ask it to break down the outline, structure, tone, and rhetorical moves. Have AI help you write sermons using your prompts as well. It helps you learn by doing — while gaining clarity and confidence.
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5. Finding Your Voice > Echoing Others
Find your fastball.
Over time, you must transition from copying others to crafting your own sermons.
Use familiar structures at first — then create your own structure. But find your own voice:
• How would you explain this at your dinner table?
• What words and stories feel natural for you?
Memorizing and internalizing your sermons, rather than reading them, will help you sound more like you — not your mentor or favorite preacher.
How AI Helps:
Feed SermonDone up to 15 of your old sermons. The AI can learn your style — your phrasing, rhythm, structure, and story type — and help you generate new sermon drafts that sound like you. It can also suggest which words or phrases you tend to overuse and give alternatives that keep things fresh.
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6. Obsessed with the Art > Doing a Job
Love the craft.
The best quarterbacks watch hours of film. The best storytellers understand the best arcs. The best comedians analyze setups and punchlines.
Great preachers are no different.
Study the masters — old and new.
Outline their sermons. Watch how they tell stories. Examine their patterns. Pay attention to how they engage emotion. Study callback techniques and storytelling pacing.
If you’re not obsessed with the art of preaching, you’ll never master it.
Great preaching comes from a deep place of enjoyment as well. Have you heard the phrase “preaching yourself happy?” I’ve watched both guys who love preaching and guys that don’t… and there is a noticeable and significant difference. You can see the joy on their face.
How AI Helps:
Ask SermonDone to analyze a sermon by Tim Keller, Charles Spurgeon, or Craig Groeschel. It can give you a breakdown of structure, transitions, tension and release, and illustration flow. You’ll start to recognize patterns of brilliance — and apply them to your own preaching.
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7. Engaging Versatility > Predictably Boring
Develop multiple sermon styles.
Just like a great pitcher has more than one pitch, great preachers have more than one sermon style.
Learn to mix it up:
• Different outlines
• Different cadences
• Different types of Gospel invitations
This keeps you sharp — and keeps your church from falling asleep.
If you normally have a topical structure, switch it up and try narrative or exegetical. You will be flexing a new muscle and you might actually start to enjoy another style.
Versatility allows the text to inform your structure and your type of response.
Tim Keller lists 5 legitimate Gospel responses that preachers can use in his book Center Church:
1. Out of fear of punishment (fear of wrath/judgment)
• Some respond to the gospel because they realize the seriousness of sin and the reality of God’s judgment.
2. Out of desire for reward (hope for heaven)
• Some come because they long for the blessings of eternal life and the restoration that comes with it.
3. Out of sense of beauty (love for God’s beauty and glory)
• Some respond because they are captivated by the beauty, love, and excellence of who God is.
4. Out of sense of gratitude (thankfulness for grace)
• Some come because they realize the incredible gift of salvation and are overwhelmed with gratitude.
5. Out of sense of duty or moral obligation (obedience to the truth)
• Some respond because they see that God *deserves* their allegiance and obedience.
How AI Helps:
AI can reframe your sermon in multiple delivery formats — whether you’re aiming for a narrative style, exegetical, topical, persuasive, a problem/solution approach, a head/heart/hands breakdown, or a question-driven structure. This flexibility allows you to tailor your message to different audiences and keep your preaching fresh and engaging, rather than falling into a predictable rhythm.
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8. Discipleship + Persuasion > Transcendent Lecturing
Exegete the culture, not just the Bible.
You must be able to explain how the Bible answers today’s real questions.
What cultural assumptions does your text challenge? How does it expose the lies of sin, secularism, relativism, and neomarxism?
A great preacher builds bridges between the ancient text and the modern world, persuading people with truth and grace.
You need to strong-man cultural heresy’s, arguments and wrong presuppositions the people have walking into your church. Can you poke holes in those ideas and persuade others to repent and walk out with the truth?
Keller says in his book Preaching:
“We must not only speak the truth but also make it plausible. We must confront people’s faulty baseline cultural narratives and reframe their understanding of Christianity by showing how it fulfills their deepest hopes and resolves their deepest contradictions.”
How AI Helps:
SermonDone can analyze current news, cultural trends, worldview shifts, and generational language to help you bridge Scripture with today’s context. Ask, “How might Romans 1 & 2 confront modern views on sexuality?” or “What objections to this passage are common among deconstructionist or hedonistic thinkers?” The AI can surface relevant insights so you can preach with cultural awareness and sharper persuasion.
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9. Professional Patterns > No Margin
Build elite preparation habits.
When you spend more time engaging your congregations eyes, than your own notes, you will level up as a preacher. If you have the right patterns built in, you can accomplish it.
Here’s a professional workflow that will elevate you:
• Monday: Finish your manuscript.
• Tuesday: Read it aloud.
• Wednesday: Preach it casually while glancing at notes.
• Thursday: Preach it fully from memory/internalization.
Internalization leads to real engagement.
You’ll stop performing and start truly connecting.
How AI Helps:
Use AI to do the first 60% — text breakdown, commentary summary, outline first drafts — so you are truly done writing by Monday. That gives you the margin to meditate, memorize, and rehearse.
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10. The Gospel > Endless Ambiguous Journey
Preach the Gospel every week.
Billy Graham said it often, you are not guaranteed tomorrow.
Eternity is real.
If you aren’t weaving the Gospel into every sermon — the reality of sin, grace, and redemption — then you’re just giving TED talks with Bible verses attached.
It’s become popular to be intentionally ambiguous — to draw bigger crowds by softening the message, hoping people will eventually discover the truth on their own through personal Bible reading or small groups. But this “endless journey” approach hasn’t worked.
Your people need the Gospel every single Sunday — from every single text.
A young preacher once preached a sermon at Spurgeon’s church (or under Spurgeon’s mentorship — accounts vary slightly), and afterward, Spurgeon asked him a simple but piercing question:
“Did you give them the gospel?”
The young man said something like,
“No, because the gospel wasn’t in the text I was preaching from.”
Spurgeon sharply replied (paraphrased):
“Young man, don’t you know that from every little village in England there is a road to London? And so, from every text of Scripture there is a road to Christ. And your business as a preacher is to find that road and get on it, and bring your people safely to Christ!”
How AI Helps:
AI can help you locate the Gospel thread in any text. It can suggest how that passage connects to redemption, the cross, or the Kingdom of God. It can generate multiple gospel calls depending on audience — from the unchurched skeptic to the faithful saint.
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Bonus Tip: How AI Can Help You Preach Better
Today’s preachers have an incredible tool previous generations could only dream of: AI sermon assistants.
SermonDone.com can:
• Help you brainstorm outlines
• Generate research and cultural insights
• Create illustrations, applications, and small group guides
• Turn your notes into polished manuscripts
• Help you internalize sermons faster
When leveraged correctly, AI can help you focus more on prayer, study, and creativity, and less on staring at a blinking cursor.
It’s not about shortcutting the work — it’s about multiplying your effectiveness.
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In Closing
Becoming a 10/10 preacher isn’t just about talent.
It’s about devotion to truth, devotion to people, and devotion to your craft.
You can do this.
The Church needs you to do this.
Now get to work — and may you preach with clarity, conviction, and Christ at the center.
Jon-Michael Sherman