Sermon Evaluation Form (Free Printable PDF)
September 21, 2026 · updated October 15, 2026
A free two-page form for evaluating a sermon — your own from a recording, a student’s in a homiletics class, or a colleague’s in a peer group. Page one has four parts — structure, handling of the text, delivery, application — with fifteen checkboxes, each asking for something you can point to. Page two has a row for counting and a grid for three Sundays. There are no score boxes. Print it on US Letter or A4; no sign-up, no email.
Download the form (PDF, US Letter) A4 version
What is on it
- Four blanks at the top: preacher, date, text, length.
- What to leave off: doctrine, spiritual weight, the preacher. The form is about the words, which is what makes it usable as a sermon feedback form between colleagues.
- Four parts with checkboxes: structure, handling of the text, delivery, application. Each line asks for something in the sermon itself — whether the joints between points are visible, whether every illustration comes back to the text, how many times the filler came, whether the application has a when.
- A counting row: filler, same sentence ending, longest sentence, introduction and total minutes. Counts cannot be wrong.
- Three Sundays on page two: what you noticed, and whether last week’s finding got fixed. One sermon shows the day; three show the habit.
It is the checklist from How to Evaluate a Sermon, laid out for paper.
Questions
Why are there no scores?
Most preaching evaluation rubrics ask for a number from 1 to 5 on each line. Two listeners give the same sermon a 3 and a 4, and neither number tells the preacher what to change on Sunday. This form asks for the sentence where the second point began, the illustration that never came back to the text, how many times “amen?” was said. Two people who fill it in usually point to the same places, and the preacher can go and look.
Does it work in a homiletics class or a peer group?
That is what it was laid out for. Hand it out before the sermon and collect it after; because it asks for things to point to rather than opinions, people actually write on it. Used as a critique form for student sermons, it keeps comments on lines everyone can find. If you need a grade, grade the evaluation rather than the sermon: did the student point to real lines, and was the counting row filled in? In a peer evaluation, the three-Sunday grid lets the group see whether last week’s note was heard.
How do I use it with a recording?
Do not fill it in from memory. Record the sermon — a phone near the pulpit is enough — get it into text, and go through the form on the page. Reviewing a sermon from a recording and transcribing a sermon from YouTube walk through that step.
Link to it, copy it, hand it out
The PDF is released under CC BY-ND 4.0. Link to this page or to the PDF, or print copies and hand them out in your class or group. Two conditions: keep the credit to Preaching Lab, and do not distribute an altered version. The license covers the form PDF, not the rest of this site. It stays free.
The slow part is not the form
Going through the form is quick once the sermon is on the page. What takes the evening is getting it there: transcribing the recording, then finding the lines each box asks about. Preaching Lab does that part. Send a recording or a YouTube link, and the same four parts come back with every finding quoted from your own words. As the weeks stack up, you also see which habits keep coming back and which are gone — what page two of the form is for.
To see what that looks like before you send anything, read a full report on a sermon everyone knows: Spurgeon, “Compel Them to Come In” or Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.