Ep 114: The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon, with Austin Carty

24 snips

Oct 23, 2025

Austin Carty, pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church and author of "Some of the Words Are Theirs," shares insights on the art of sermon writing. He discusses how to choose impactful passages and the importance of budgeting time for effective sermon preparation. Carty emphasizes the need for humble conviction over certainty, using stories to convey theological ideas, and acknowledging diverse viewpoints. He also highlights the role of routine in enhancing creativity and the significance of aiming sermons at local congregations to broaden their appeal.

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ADVICE

Trust The Passage That Calls You

Trust the passage you feel called to and commit to that angle instead of endlessly second-guessing.
Read the text repeatedly until you sense a gravitational pull to a phrase or direction.

ADVICE

Use The Lectionary As A Guardrail

Use the lectionary as a guardrail against eisegesis and a way to cover Scripture broadly.
Carty favors Vanderbilt's Revised Common Lectionary as a practical, free resource.

ADVICE

Hook Early, Reconnect Later

Open with a compelling hook and leave it hanging until you connect it at the end.
Use parallel 'panels' that converge so listeners get a dopamine hit when connections click.

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If you’re a preaching pastor, you know what it means to feel the burden and the joy of preparing and preaching a sermon every Sunday. No matter how many years we’ve done it, we can always use a little more help to do it better.

Karl Vaters talks with Austin Carty about the craft of writing and delivering a weekly sermon, based on Austin’s latest book, Some of the Words Are Theirs: The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon. Austin is the pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church, a small congregation in Anderson, SC.

Karl and Austin talk about several of the aspects that go into sermon prep, including:

The weekly call to biblical self-reflection
How to decide what passage to preach from
How to hook the listeners into the essence of the message
Setting enough time to seriously prayerfully read, study and ponder the text
Preaching from a posture of humble conviction rather than blind certainty
And more

Links:

BONUS EPISODE (Subscribers Only)

Five Questions to Help You Preach a Well-balanced Sermon, with Austin Carty

One of the most important aspects in sermon prep and presentation today is making sure you know and acknowledge that there are points of view that are different from yours. But how do we recognize these points of view, while preaching the truth from God’s Word?

Austin Carty helps us negotiate this potential minefield in a short conversation with Karl Vaters, based on Austin’s new book, Some of the Words Are Theirs: The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon, by helping us ask these five questions:

Have I made sweeping generalizations?
Have I overargued my point?
Have I taken into account my own biases?
Have I considered other viable points of view?
Have I sufficiently justified my claims?

Links:

Some of the Words Are Theirs: The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon