How To Use Technology To Prepare A Sermon Series

A great sermon series is one that you prepare months in advance. You may be able to preach a great message on a week’s notice but stringing together multiple weeks of great messages with great illustrations, strong argumentation, and practical application is very challenging without time to study, read, ideate, and research.

Sermon series offers many inherent benefits to the preacher, not the least of which is a road map for where we are and where we are going in future weeks. But just like an actual road trip can be exciting with great planning or boring with zero thought given to ‘how we are going to get there’ a sermon series has the potential to be either.

There’s no one way to prepare a sermon series and if you’ve developed a system that works for you, by all means, continue to use that system. 

However, if you’re looking for a few tips on how to improve your process with technology, no matter how satisfied or frustrated you are with your current process, this article will provide you with just that. It includes suggested practices and procedures to help you better prepare a sermon series that feels like a road trip adventure with lots of fun stops and adventurous moments planned along the way.

Create a Six-Month Sermon Calendar and Evaluate It

Time is your friend when planning a sermon series. The sooner you know what you’re preaching, the more time you’ll have to put together a great plan for the sermon series.

Having your sermon series planned out for 12 months is a great target. It’s tough to predict what will happen in the church beyond 12 months, much less the world, so having a solid plan for a full year with loosely held plans beyond is a great goal.

Planning 12 months in advance may be intimidating if you’ve never planned beyond a few weeks. 

In this case, putting together the next six months of sermons in a spreadsheet is a great first step. Depending on how long your sermon series typically goes this could be 2-4 planned sermon series. Regardless if you’ve been preaching week to week or series to series, aiming for 6 months of planned sermons is a great first step and once you begin to get comfortable, extend your planning to 12 months.

Now, you can leverage technology to evaluate your calendar. Once you have your upcoming preaching calendar in a spreadsheet, upload that file and the spreadsheet with your last six months of preaching into your AI platform of choice. Ask the platform to compare both calendars. Are there topics you’re hitting on more than others? What books of the Bible are you missing? This is a great way to improve your preaching plan.

Read & Research for Your Sermon Series (And Then Store It)

In the months leading up to your sermon series, you want to dig the well and when the series rolls around you’ll be able to generously draw from that well instead of scrambling to find resources.

Here are suggested tools or practices to dig the well.

Read Books Written About Your Topic

Saying “Read books written about your topic” is a pretty obvious suggestion. You could have thought of that. So instead of recommending the obvious, we’ll go one step further and say hit up other preachers and ask them what books they recommend reading related to your topic. 

Search engines will reveal the obvious and most popular books on a specific topic, but getting specific recommendations from peers can provide suggestions you would not have considered… and probably additional relevant suggestions that extend beyond books.

“Interview” People In Your Church

Consider who in your church is an authority on the topic or the themes in the sermon series you’ll be preaching. Reach out to the best candidates and let them know you’re preparing a series about the topic and ask if they’d be willing to dialogue with you.

Most people in your church would not only be willing to talk with you, they’d probably be honored if you thought to ask. If you’d like to use any content from your conversation specifically related to them, be sure to ask ahead of time. 

A simple conversation will provide great insight beyond what you could generate or anything you could read in a book.

Read Commentaries… Last

During the months leading up to week one of your sermon series, you may be tempted to read commentaries. There’s no rule saying you shouldn’t or couldn’t do that. 

One of the things you want people in your congregation to do is think for themselves and understand God’s Word on their own. Saving commentaries for last gives you room to allow the Spirit to move in your head and heart without the influence of other people’s conclusions. We’re not coming up with new truths, but rather giving time and space to allow the material to interact with your personal experience.

When you do break out the commentaries, they will be a new, fresh voice to challenge and/or confirm the work you’ve already done. Here are five great commentary sets for you to consider when you get to this step in your sermon series preparation. 

Tap Into Secular Resources On the Topic

Depending on what you’re preaching, extending your research outside of faith-based materials can provide you with additional insights and material for your argumentation. 

Podcasts, books, television shows, movies, and even social media all capture the human experience. We’re not turning to these resources in search of some new truth, but rather, for commentary on what the human experience is like as it relates to your topic. 

Beyond just the human experience, you’re also exposing yourself to what type of answers the world provides and how those answers may differ from what God’s Word has to say. It’s also possible that the world “gets it right” in so many respects but God’s Word can provide authority as to why something is right.

Non-believers in the congregation may not necessarily believe what you have to say about Jesus, but if you can articulate their position accurately, you will have gained credibility with them and they may be open to more of what you have to say in the future.

Once you’ve completed this step, log your information into a platform like Notion, Sermonary, or Evernote. The beauty of logging this research using some sort of platform is that even if you don’t use all the research, you will have it for next time. One of the keys to good preaching is a strong database.

Start Preparing Each Message As You Go

The biggest problem with researching your sermon series well ahead of time is how to remember everything you learned. If you have a sermon calendar with each series broken down by verse or speaking point, you may find you can begin to pencil in different ideas, illustrations, application points, and additional material for specific weeks. 

Even if that isn’t the case, you will want to have a process for organizing your findings. You can use a running document, a notes application like Evernote, or even a folder on your computer (or in the cloud) where you dump everything from documents to pictures to saved web pages. A sermon-writing tool like Sermonary can also be a big help here, providing a built-in note taking and note saving feature for users.  

As you get closer to the series, it will become clearer where each sermon element may fit. Imagine getting to week one of your fall series and having good bones laid for most, if not all of your messages.

Have A Great Trip

Preparing for your sermon series is a little bit like ‘sampling’ the road trip before you take the family along for the ride. You’ve already made the stops, tried the restaurants, paid for the experiences, and stayed in the resorts. Now that you’re ready to preach the series, you know how to provide the best experience for everyone else. 

All you have left to do is figure out how to help them see and experience the things you’ve already seen and experienced.

And technology can be one of the engines to help you get there.

To see some of the roadmaps created by the Ministry Pass team for expository preaching, topical preaching, and youth and children’s ministry, check out https://ministrypass.com/calendars/.