DOWNLOAD THESE SERMONS TO PREACH THIS SERIES IN YOUR CHURCH!
Most pastors want to engage their church in the Bible. This sermon series does just that. Each week you’ll take a book of the Bible, provide an overview, and teach one narrative or insight. Additionally, you can create a YouVersion reading plan for your church and additional podcast content.
Are you ready for a week off? I often preach on Sundays to give pastors a week off and display new techniques for message creation and delivery.
Do You Need a Sermon Series Idea
I’ve never met a pastor with TOO many sermon series ideas.
The opposite is more our reality.
I’d love to share one idea I helped a client church create for June. We’re calling it “Summer Book Club.”
The idea is simple:
- Select one book of the Bible each week,
- Give an overview of the content, and
- Teach from your favorite verse, passage, or narrative from the book.
I know…nothing all that special. However, this series idea intentionally addresses a few things that I imagine you’d like to see in your church, too.
1. People Don’t Read The Bible Much Anymore
The Bible is intimidating. Nobody picks up books this long filled with tiny words any longer. Research shows that book sales and reading are decreasing with each passing year. To help combat these trends and better engage your church with the Bible, we need to make it more accessible and exciting.
Taking one book from the Bible a week doesn’t give you time to teach it all. And that’s a good thing. But, if you take some or most of the summer for this series, you can cover some critical sections of scripture in a way that can help the Bible come alive.
2. People Don’t Understand HOW to Read the Bible
As part of this series, I’d suggest you create a parallel podcast to talk about the Bible as people engage with the series. No need to create a new podcast channel; use your church podcast and drop a 20 – 30 minute episode mid-week to biblically engage people in a new way. And make this simple. The content matters more than your intro and outro music bed!
Here are a few podcast topic suggestions:
- How did our Bible become our Bible?
- What is the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament?
- How should we study or interpret the Bible?
- What kinds of literature do we find in the Bible? How should we interact with these different kinds of literature?
- How can the Bible be relevant to our life today?
I bet you could quickly come up with a dozen more topics that would be beneficial and interesting to your church. Don’t overthink this (but make sure your information is accurate!). Record short podcasts that help move the conversation further as the series progresses.
3. People Are Unsure Where To Start Their Bible Reading
Finally, even those in your church who aren’t intimidated by the Bible need a plan of action. Enter the Bible app brought to us by YouVersion.
YouVersion is so simple. This app allows you, as a church, to create a reading plan accessible to your church. You could make one plan for everyone or a few options from which to choose. The point is that you’re simplifying the process by creating a plan.
Here’s a proposal for the sermon series:
- Week 1 (June 4): Exodus
- Week 2 (June 11): Proverbs
- Week 3 (June 18): John
- Week 4 (June 25): Philippians
- Week 5 (June 2): Acts
Again, there’s no magic to this order. I like having some Old Testament and New. Covering something recognizable and unique keeps it interesting. Finally, I would keep this to 4 or 5 weeks to avoid losing steam, but it’s possible you could stretch this across the summer.
Why summer?
That’s a great question. Something like this may be attractive and helpful throughout the year, but the summer is when we typically see more insiders engaged than guests. I prefer to focus our more insider months on topics like this and reserve back-to-school months and January for high felt-need series content.
If I were to structure a series calendar, it would look something like this:
- January: Practical, helpful, felt-need series
- February: Series on relationships
- March: Book of the Bible that journeys to Easter
- April: Easter; Practical, helpful, felt-need series following Easter
- May: Series on following Jesus
- June: Biblical character or book focus
- July: Biblical character or book focus
- August: Practical, helpful, felt-need series
- September: Series on work
- October: Biblical character or book focus
- November: Generosity series
- December: Christmas
This is obviously only one way to plan. What’s important is that you plan!
I’d Love to Chat More About Preaching and Message Ideas!
If you have any questions about sermons, series, or preaching, don’t hesitate to ask. It’s one of my favorite topics to discuss and teach.
Also, I travel and preach at churches like yours 25ish times a year. I’d be happy to fill in if you’d like (NEED) a day off. Better yet, if helpful, I’d love to spend some time with you and your leadership talking about church strategy, ministry models, and funding. And I can preach while I’m there!
You can reach out and check my availability HERE.
I have a passion for preaching. If you feel your communication could be better or want to evaluate a new preaching structure, this COURSE may be interesting.
I also serve as a teaching pastor, content developer, and communications coach for churches. If this skill would benefit you or your church, EMAIL ME to set up a conversation.
Until next time,
