Planning out your sermons for a series is a great way to make sure your congregation is getting a balanced biblical education. Preaching week to week allows you to keep your sermons relevant, but it does limit which Scriptures or biblical concepts you keep in mind. Your preference for not planning could be leaving large gaps in your congregation’s understanding. Even if you already regularly plan your sermon as a series, you can benefit from the new ideas presented below.
Identify Gaps in Your Preaching Topics
Read over your recent sermons and ask yourself:
· Are you mostly covering the Old Testament or the New Testament?
· Are your sermons geared toward leading visitors to the church or toward teaching your existing congregation?
· Have you recently covered important topics to the family, like godly parenting and partnership in marriage?
· If a new believer joined your church in the last two years, what would they have learned from you, and what knowledge would be missing?
Choose the Topic for Your Series
When choosing your topic, consider what would be relevant to current events or urgent to preach. If nothing comes to mind, then consider what the members in your church have consulted you about. What problems have you noticed popping up in the lives of your congregation? It could be the right time to share a message about one of these topics.
Of course, you should always pray throughout these steps and seek God’s guidance for your pastoral messages. Seek God’s wisdom on what your congregation is missing in their biblical education and how you can best capture their attention.
Structure the Boundaries for Your Series
Now that you have a topic, research a passage or two of Scripture that you can build your message around. Decide how deep the dive into the subject will be. Will it be exhaustively covering a different facet of the subject each week or going at a quicker pace with several points in each message?
What is the spiritual maturity level of your congregation? If it’s widely varied, make sure to convey the message in a way everyone can understand. Ask the Lord for insight on how to best reach your church as a whole.
Plan how long your series will be. Consider your congregation’s attention span. Perhaps it’s best not to spend an entire season on the same passage of Scripture. Three to five weeks per series is generally in keeping with your congregation’s attention.
Flesh out your Sermon Series
Develop a series title and theme to keep your audience engaged. Are there any humorous aspects to your topic? If nothing jumps out at you, do you see anything humorous when the biblical passage is contrasted with modern life? How can you structure the series in an interesting way? Maybe there are modern examples of the situations you will discuss that you could bring up. Your audio/video team could get creative and record a short, related skit to play each week.
Your theme doesn’t have to be complicated every series. It could be as simple as alliteration in the titles of your points each week, or a personal story you share in each of your sermons. Your goal is to craft and personalize the message so that it remains in your congregation’s head.
After you finish a series, do a few one-off sermons before beginning your next series to clear the palate and get people ready again to devote the next few weeks to one topic.
Make a Plan that Goes Beyond the Next Few Weeks
You’ve chosen a topic for a sermon series for the weeks to come. Now since you have looked over your previous sermons, make a list. What’s important for your congregation to hear about often, and what could be relayed once or twice a year? It’s easy for topics to slip through the cracks if you don’t stay aware.
Salvation and discipleship will always be on your mind, but don’t neglect to teach a godly approach to financial stewardship, marriage, parenting, education, health, and careers. Ask the Lord for guidance as to what you may have overlooked.
A calendar can be helpful when planning your weekly and monthly topics. Consider adopting a regular plan to ensure important teaching regularly makes it way to the ears of your church. Holidays are generally a good time to preach a salvation message since your church members will often bring guests to church with them during this time. Easter and Christmas especially will often have unsaved visitors in the pews who have come because they have memories of church in their childhood, or they feel a pull to come or are just visiting family members.
Remember that the church will have new members joining regularly throughout your time as pastor. Remember that these new members missed the last time you covered a certain topic. They may need guidance in that very area. Thinking ahead by scheduling sermon series and topics is a wise, long-term way to meet the spiritual learning needs of your church.
