Pastors of growing churches spend time on preaching

Research from Thom Rainer:

If time is a good measure, the leaders of effective churches prepare well for the sermons they preach each week. By a ratio of greater than 5 to 1, the leaders of the effective churches spent significantly more time in sermon preparation than the pastors of the comparison churches. Effective preachers spent an average of 20 hours a week and comparison church pastors spent an average of two hours a week working on sermons.

Some other good insights in the series of articles. For a lot of reasons, preaching is the most challenging thing I do every week. Part of this is because I can’t preach it if I’m not living it. Another reason is that it takes an incredible amount of work to prepare as I should. Some weeks, like this past Sunday, I’m discouraged by the result. It’s tempting to think that preaching doesn’t matter, but for those of us who have experienced preaching as it should be, it really does matter. But it costs something. This was a good reminder that the payoff isn’t out of line with the costs.