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- How To Create Great Sermon Series
OK, I don't have a ton of time this morning because I need to take my son to class…
But I wanted to jump on and share some hopefully useful info with you about sermon series…
First, if you haven’t yet heard. Church Flow Pro and Humble Lamb are giving away 2 premium Humble Lamb Bibles to a pastor or church staff member! These Bibles are worth over $200 apiece. They’re absolutely beautiful and I’d love for YOU to have one.
Ok, back to sermon series…
Most churches use some form of sermon series to clarify, and organize their message prep but if you're not using a sermon series, I highly encourage it!
It creates a natural rhythm for your Sunday mornings and small groups. And the content you generate is not only useful for feeding the flock, but also for creating momentum in the church calendar.
Here’s a few tips.
1) We use a content planning system.
We’ve selected 6-8 types of series that we want to do at least once every two years.
This includes a Bible book study, theology, Christian living, stewardship/generosity, apologetics/evangelism, etc.
It works kind of like a diet.
The idea is that we want to feed the church a balanced diet from the pulpit.
That way it isn’t 12 straight series on one given thing…
And it makes it easy to say, “OK, we’ve been down in the deep end for the past few months lets pop over to the shallow side of the pool and do an evangelistic series connected to a felt need.”
Or, "We’ve been teaching a lot of topical…let’s do a verse by verse through Ephesians.”
Make sense?
2) We brainstorm series ideas with a team.
Every few months we gather the staff and have a series brainstorm meeting. (they’re notified in advance so they can bring ideas)
This usually generates 20-30 ideas for sermon series or individual messages.
Typically we’ll get not just the series title but even 3 or 4 individual message ideas for each series.
3) We plan strategically.
After we have the ideas written down my wife and I will typically go to lunch or even take a retreat and map out the next 6-12 months of sermon series.
We work top-down and start filling in the calendar with how long each series will be and what individual messages will take place on what dates.
This gives us a content map that we can add to our project management software for our team to start adding ideas to.
Since we launched our 3rd service and built a preaching team we now brainstorm sermon ideas collaboratively which requires a map of upcoming messages.
Ok hope that’s helpful!
The main thing is I encourage you to do series and map them out 6-12 months in advance. You can always change if you feel led by the Holy Spirit…we do that sometimes!
But having a plan allows you to prepare better messages and be more strategic with small group content, etc. Like I said earlier, it gives your church a great rhythm.
Want more strategic coaching on how to grow your church with less stress and more impact?
Blessings,
Pastor Jake
PS - Don’t forget to enter the giveaway to win a FREE Humble Lamb premium Bible. This is just to bless pastors!