Sermon Notes: A Simple Page Layout and How to Use It All Week

Good sermon notes fit on one page with the same headings every week: date, speaker, passage, main points, verses to look up, one thing to act on, and questions. During the sermon, write short phrases and every reference you hear. Afterward, look up the verses and write the one thing you plan to do in your own words. Reread the page midweek or take it to your small group, and keep every sermon in one dated notebook so you can find it a year from now.

We make Ophaya smart pens, and one comes up near the end. Everything before that works with any notebook and pen, and you can rename the headings to fit how your church runs its services.

A simple layout for sermon notes

Set up every page the same way so you aren't deciding where things go in the middle of the sermon. From the top:

• the date and which service, such as Sun, Oct 4, 9:30
• the speaker, plus the sermon title or series if there is one
• the main passage, written as a reference like John 3
• the main points, numbered as you hear them
• verses to look up, in a narrow column down the right edge
• one thing to act on this week
• questions you want to ask or think about

Give the main points the left two thirds of the page and rule a line for the verses column. The bottom quarter is for the action line and the questions, and most of it gets filled in after the service.

Keep the action line to one specific item. "Be more patient" is hard to check on Thursday, and "call my brother before Friday" isn't. For references, use the short form (Jn 3, Rom 8) with the same abbreviations every week, a habit our guide to taking better notes recommends for class too.

What to write during the sermon, and what to leave for later

During the sermon

Fill in the top line before the service starts. If the bulletin or the screen shows the passage, copy it then.

Once the sermon starts, listen for how it's built. A point the speaker numbers or repeats is usually a main point, so get it down in five or six words. Stories get a word or two ("the leaky roof"), enough to retell them later.

When a verse comes up in passing, put the reference in the right column and keep listening. Stopping to look it up costs you the next point. A line that loses you gets a "?" in the margin. And when you notice you've been writing nonstop, drop the stories and keep the points.

After the service

Give the page ten minutes the same day, in the parking lot or over lunch. Start with a one-sentence summary at the top, in your own words. When nothing comes, look at the main points and ask what joins them. Read each passage in the verses column and jot a few words beside it, then write the action line with a day attached. Each "?" becomes a full question you could ask someone at small group.

An example sermon notes page

This page is made up, from an imaginary sermon in a series called "Rebuilding." The last column shows when each part was written.

During the sermon itself, the writer put down about 40 words. The summary and the plan for the gutter came that afternoon.

A notebook for church notes, or your phone?

Keep sermon notes in one notebook used for nothing else. Mixed in with grocery lists and work calls, a sermon from March is hard to find by June. Number the pages and save the first two for an index, as in a bullet journal: one line per sermon with the date, passage, speaker and page.

Notebooks for church notes have to work on your lap, since most seats don't come with a desk. Look for a hard cover or a spiral that folds flat, in a size that fits in a bag next to your Bible.

A printed sermon notes book does the setup for you. Ink & Willow's Weekly Sermon Notes Journal, for one, has space on each spread for the date, sermon title, speaker, location and key Scriptures, with room for 75 sermons. Its list price was $10.99 at our October 7, 2026 check. The catch is fixed space, since a long sermon outgrows the lines. For people who like prompts, though, a church note journal like that is a good buy. Add an action line and questions by hand if it has no spot for them.

A Bible app that takes notes puts them right beside the passage, and you can search them later. The rest of the phone is the problem. A text comes in, and by the time you've glanced at it the speaker is on the next point. If you use one anyway, turn on Do Not Disturb first and keep one sermon note per Sunday, titled with the date and passage. Our article on handwriting vs typing notes covers the research on each. We'd still write on paper in the service. We sell pens, so weigh that.

A paper notebook that also saves to your phone

The Ophaya pen writes in ink, and its infrared camera reads a dot pattern printed on Ophaya notebooks. Each page you write in one also shows up in the free Ophaya Pro+ app on iPhone, iPad or Android. Ordinary paper gets the ink and no digital copy. The phone can stay in your bag during the service, because the pen stores pages and syncs them when you reconnect. The Smart Pen + Notebook set is $85.99.

Review your sermon notes during the week

Pick a fixed time, say Wednesday morning with coffee, and give the page five minutes. Read the summary and the action line. If you did the thing, check it off. If you didn't, write down what got in the way, then read one passage from the verses column.

If your small group discusses Sunday's message, that's a review already on the calendar. Bring the page and your questions. When you compare main points with someone, add the ones you missed in another color with their initials. Once a month, copy each sermon's summary sentence into the index next to its date.

How to find an old sermon in your notes

Say a friend asks about a sermon on Nehemiah from last fall. The index finds it by passage. Without one, the dates narrow it to a few weeks, and a book name in the top outside corner of each page shows up as you flip. The other corner can hold a paper tag, like the series name or "guest speaker." If your church posts sermons online by date, the date on your page tells you which recording to play.

In an Ophaya notebook, the app adds two ways in. You can tag notes by series or book and search them by keyword. OCR converts handwriting to editable text. Run it on a page when you want the words as text to search or paste into a message for your group, and check names and verse numbers first. Pages also export as PDF or Word files. Our guide to converting handwriting to text covers phone apps that do this from a photo of an ordinary notebook.

Frequently asked questions

What should I write in sermon notes?

The date, speaker and passage, the main points in a few words each, every reference you hear, one thing to act on and your questions.

Do I need a sermon notes book?

No. A plain notebook works, and drawing the header by hand takes under a minute. A printed book saves that minute and keeps every page the same. Buy one if that makes you more likely to bring it every week.

Is it OK to take sermon notes on a phone?

Churches differ, so follow what's normal where you attend. If you do, silence it and keep only the notes app open.

Should I record the sermon?

Ask first, and check if your church already posts sermons online. If it does, a dated page is all you need to find the right recording.