Video Transcript: Session 32 Sermon Series

Welcome back. We're doing a slight shift here in session 32. In this class, it's  called preacher preparation presentation, a class on making and preaching  sermons. And we've looked at you know, you as a preacher, and who you are,  the preparation that you have to do in order to preach a sermon, we looked at  that extensively, we looked at presentation and how you go about making a  presentation after you've developed the sermon. And now I'm going to shift in  these last sessions that I have with you to talk about just some practical  considerations. And they're going to be just some subject matter that I think will  be helpful to you. Don't fall neatly into one of those other other sections. And so  today, you'll note, I want to talk about preaching sermon series. Now, if you're  somebody who is just going around preaching and various churches, this maybe won't be relevant to you, I'm talking mostly to those of you who are going to be  in a congregational kind of setting, and you will have some preaching  responsibilities on a regular basis. There are huge advantages to preaching your messages in a series. Now Rick Warren in a blog that he does for preachers  said, here are the three reasons that he preaches in series. One, it builds  anticipation in the congregation. In other words, when he announces a series,  and it's something that they're going to look forward to that they're saying, Oh,  this is great, I want to be part of that I want to, I want to be there. And so he  always announces a series of messages well beforehand, in order to build that  anticipation, secondly, it can create the buzz of word of mouth advertising. Now,  Statistics have shown that if you're trying to grow a local congregation, 75% of  the people who will come to your church will come because they know  somebody there, it will be a friend, it'll be a relative, it'll be a neighbor, but  somehow there will be a connection to somebody who's there. Well, creating  buzz, means that they, your people have an opportunity to talk to others saying,  hey, you know what, there's something happening in our church, you gotta  come. This is a series about and hopefully, if it's one of the time we'll talk in a  moment about that is attractive to the community, people will consider coming in  to create that kind of buzz of anticipation, the buzz of word of mouth advertising.  And then thirdly, preaching in series saves time. If you're going to preach in a  series, you can gather material that will be relevant to more than one message.  For instance, if you're preaching through a book of the Bible, for instance, as  we'll talk about in a moment, you can gather all the material you need, or  whether you're going to some topic and gather a variety of materials. And that  will save you preparation time because you won't have to start from scratch in  your research. And so consider when you're going to be preaching in a regular  situation, whatever that is, creating a series of messages to fit that situation.  Now, when we're talking about series of messages, you've got to know that  there are different kinds of series or styles of sermon series. One might be the  sections of the Bible, you can do a book of the Bible. In fact, there are those  who believe and passionately believe that going verse by verse by verse 

through a book of the Bible, is the only way really to preach. Now, I disagree  with that. But preaching through a Bible has some advantages. One of the  disadvantages is the fact that it will take you like two years to get through a book of the Bible. And in the meantime, there are all these other themes that might be relevant to people. And so that might be your style, though that regular on some  regular basis. You say, I want people to understand what is in the book of  Philippians. Or I want people to understand the book of Ephesians. Or you can  do sections within a book. The very first series I did preaching many years ago  now was I decided to preach through the Sermon on the Mount. And all that  advantage of gathering that material was mine, I gather all kinds of material on  the Sermon on the Mount, started with the Beatitudes, Blessed are the poor in  spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven bless of those who mourn for there'll  be comforted, blessed, et cetera, preached out one on each of those. And then I was six months into this series. And frankly, I was a bit bored myself. So I was  afraid that that was happening in the congregation. There are all kinds of ways  that you can look at a section of the Bible. I preached a series of six messages  on I Corinthians 13. What is love? And you define it by all those verbs that are  mentioned in I Corinthians 13. And so we looked at each one of those or the fruit of the Spirit. You can look at each one of those words or take any significant  portion of Scripture, Romans 8, I did like seven sermons on Romans 8, two or  three different times just because it was such a rich chapter and so That's a  section of the Bible. You know, I brought in the context before and after, but my  series was this Romans 8. Or you can do Bible characters you can do David, for instance, he's a popular right now, if you go on line you'll find all kinds of  information about David is a series of messages that people have preached.  And I've noticed in West Michigan here, that seems to be a popular subject right  now. And there's just a bunch of material out there. But you can do other series  about characters. You know, I did one on the the women that are mentioned in  the genealogy of Jesus, and they're surprising women. And so that was for an  Advent series, to talk about how in the world you get Rahab, the prostitute in the genealogy, the ancestry of Jesus Christ, the only pure person has ever walked  on the face of the earth. How do you get a Tamar who seduces her father in law, because he's mistreated the way that he was supposed to treat her according to the traditions of that day, and a baby's born. And that's one of the ancestors of  Jesus Christ and think this is a rather sordid story. Yeah, how do we get this in  the Bible, and that this is the background to Jesus. And so each one of those  women went through one per week, you know, Bathsheba, the one who  commits adultery with David and yet the lineage of Jesus is traced through this  woman who was probably not even Jewish. And anyway, so you can do those  kinds of things, or just encounters of people, I did a lesson from series once for  people within the lesson story and their encounter with Jesus Christ and and  how they viewed him and and what truth was about Jesus, for instance, what 

Pilate, Herod, the Jewish leaders, et cetera, that these are people, Peter with his his denial of Jesus Christ. And the Centurion said, Surely this is the Son of God,  you can do those kinds of things. These can make interesting and challenging  series for your people. So you can take Bible sections, or you can do a topical  series. A topical series can be things like a human interest story, a message on  the family. Now, when you are doing sermon series, you should keep in mind  that some series will be good for your congregation, I'll talk about this in a  moment. But some should be fitting the culture, fitting the the unchurched world  attractive to them. So some human interesting, like, family of parenting that the  Bible gives us wisdom on that there can be a series of messages that's  developed in such a way that people will come and be, it'll create that buzz and  create that anticipation that you want created. And so answering challenges, you know, how about science and, and faith, how do those two relate and some  great material about that, and, and you could look at very subject, where is God  when it hurts. Why? Why do we have to apologize for the fact that when we're in pain, we don't understand where God is? Where is God, when things go wrong  in our lives, doctrinal issues, or all kinds of doctrinal issues that could be  established within a topical series of messages. So you can do it that way. Now,  here's a couple of illustrations of topical messages. Here's a series. I hope you  can see that a home and family so you know, this person made a marriage  made in paradise, looking at Genesis 2:18-25, the story of Adam and Eve and  Eve being created and brought to Adam, the world's greatest undertaking,  Deuteronomy 6:1-9, child raising, and the talks about talking about these things  with your children, you know, not only to keep the love of God on your, on your  wrist and on your forehead, but in your heart. You know, here, O Israel, the  LORD our God, the Lord is One, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength that's in that section, and then it says, and you should talk  about these things with your children. So there are some tips in there about child raising are from dreadlock to wedlock and okay, how do you fall in love with  marriage? That's great passage from the Apostle Paul, God's word to married  couples, I Corinthians 7:1-5, you know, don't be mismatched with unbelievers.  That's, you know, you've got to share this faith as a bedrock for your  relationship. God's word to singles are the mean don't have the single life in  such a way that God has honored God's word to the separated, you're  considering divorce and remarriage. What does the Bible have to say about  that? And how should we view that God's word about your money? Money is the number one reason married couples fight. And so how do you view money  together? Alright, here's a series of a topical series on prayer. Excuse me the  place of prayer. Luke 18:1, where that's the widow who comes in pleads for the  before the unjust judge. And there's a wonderful teaching about prayer there. Or  the privilege of prayer, Psalm 55, the pattern for prayer, the Lord's Prayer in  Matthew 6, and problems of prayer, what happens when prayer doesn't seem to 

work? So these kinds of topical series can be wonderfully effective in getting out  a message. So what kind do you want to preach? Another kind of series would  be the lectionary. Now, in my tradition, we didn't use the lectionary. But the  lectionary is is a you can find it online if you're not familiar with it. Many  established denominations use this lectionary. And what it does is it goes  through the church year, every week, within the church year, every Sunday has  a title to it, it might be before Pentecost or after from Pentecost, there might be  Advent and then epiphany after after Advent and, and those kinds of things. So  there are four texts given in the in the lectionary every single week. And there  are resources for the preacher so you can find these things online. All you need  to do is put in lectionary and the lectionary will give you in a in a pattern. These  four texts every week, and then it'll give you illustrations will give you all sorts of  resources to use in your sermon making, in fact those who use the lectionary  say, here are the reasons you should do it. One, you don't get stuck in a rut of  your favorite passages, two your congregation gets a balanced exposure to the  entire Bible over a three year period. The Scripture texts are always related to  the church season, and the overall structure of worship, reenact the life and  ministry of Jesus Christ over the course of each year. And the biblical content of  worship increases. So it's, it's biblical, and tries to follow an Old Testament  reading a New Testament, reading epistle, reading four texts every single week,  you might want to look at that, when you're trying to figure out what kind of what  kind of series should I preach? Another kind of approach would be to do a  general calendar. Now, this is the style that we tend to use in the churches that I  have served in the last at least 30 of the 40 years. And that is we had an idea  about the general church calendar. And so, you know, we'd start maybe with  advent, we plan Advent, and in Advent it say, Okay, I got four weeks there  between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the United States. And all right, what  am I going to do to help people anticipate the coming of Jesus that is  represented in the Advent experience, or the Christmas experience? And so  what subjects will help people do them so we would develop an Advent series of messages, and then we would do the general calendar of Lent. Okay, Lent, that  40 day period before Easter, and it's a time traditionally, would we focus on, you  know, preparing our hearts for celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. And in  many cases, that involves contemplating my sins. So we look at those, you  know, six to seven weeks of what are going to be the subjects that would help  us do this general calendar, we wouldn't do it from January to Lent. Season but,  but we were acknowledged the general calendar of Christmas and Easter, you  know, of course, you're always doing something there. And sometimes before  and sometimes after I found it often helpful, as I'll say, in a few moments, to  capitalize on Christmas. And Easter, in fact, Rick Warren, he's talking about the  reason he preaches in series says he would always announce his series at the  right times. And Christmas and Easter would be times when he got the biggest 

audience of the year, at least that's experience here in the United States. And so he would announce his next sermon series on those days, and get the biggest  audience building anticipation and building buzz. Another very helpful series,  way to go about developing a sermon series would be to do like themes. You  know, I for good, or Ill have been involved in six building campaigns during my  years of ministry. And each one of those was accompanied by a sermon series  or two, especially as we're raising funds. Now, sometimes we consider  stewardship along the way, but other times other other considerations. You  know, one time I preached the book of Nehemiah where Nehemiah comes, and  he's rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, because we were looking at a major  relocation and I wanted people to be involved with that relocation. And when,  when the relocation took longer than I thought we had planned, and I went on to  the book to look at the next book in series. And so we talked about you know,  what is it means to move, the book of Ezra talks about moving because they get this great vision for bringing people back to Jerusalem. And so did this whole  thing about God goes along as we were going to move. In fact, we moved from  one facility into a temporary facility for two and a half years. And then we moved  into the main facility, the new new auditorium and other buildings that we had  built over a six and a half year period. And so those kinds of series, were just  very important to try to keep the congregation focused on what we're doing  ahead. Or you can do seems like a spiritual growth campaign. And, you know,  sometimes you use a building campaign, but you can use that in spiritual ways.  Too, what ways do you want your congregation to grow through a period of  spiritual growth, and so very helpful to do something similar to the building  campaign kind of thing, and that you say, Okay, for this period of time, we're  going to have this focus for a spiritual growth in this congregation. And now, how am I going to populate that and support that sermon series in such a way that  it's more meaningful, and so we would produce promotional material for it, or we would produce things that would be pushing the envelope as far as people  engaging with the Word of God. And so we'd have people have devotions that  they would have. So we had five days a week, we didn't do it seven, but five  days a week, they had a devotional that they can read that related to the  message that was coming up. And then we did our discussion materials. So  which we provided for families around their dinner, or we provided for small  groups that would meet to say, after the message, how can we keep the  application of this message going. And so those kinds of themes and campaigns can be very, very powerful in your church. So another style is to simply do your  own design. Now, I'll share with you the way that I've come down, you can do  whatever you want with those kinds of sermon series through a year. But it helps to plan ahead, I plan a general year just very generally, but then planned in three months, increments during that time. And this is the way I tended to do it. In the  fall, I would have a series on vision and mission. In other words, we've had the 

church year, which tended to go through May, early June. And then the summer  is off. We'll talk about that in just a moment, as you'll see. But then in the fall is  we're kicking off all ministry programs, again, for children and youth and adults. I would focus on why are we doing this stuff we're doing. And once again, we're  talking about the vision of the church, the vision of the church that I last served  was We exist to help each other take the next step in our relationship with Jesus Christ. And how do we do that by gathering together by growing numerically, but  spiritually, and then by going into the world to make a difference. And so every  fall, I did a different series of messages on that subject. This is what we're doing. This is why we're doing it. This is how we believe this mission relates to who we  are as individuals. And then Advent would come after Thanksgiving, and we do  an Advent series of four weeks. The the new year would be the time when we do a spiritual growth campaign for a period of time. That's when we would just flood people, that's when we seem to have the best consistent attendance of people  in the winter months, summer, people are gone here where I live, and then Lent  would come. And we would do at a time of Lent preparing people for the  celebration of Easter. And then after that, we do a variety of things, usually a  Bible study of some kind where we would want people to have a time of intense  gaining of knowledge about a particular section of the Bible. And that would lead us to summer. Now the summer you'll say the not series series, what we would  do there is just a series of messages that didn't really relate to each other a  whole bunch, like summer in the Psalms are the promises of God that each  message stood by itself. Because so many people would be gone on vacation  each week in the church I serve, that we didn't want to try to do something that  require people to be in this message to understand this one to understand this  one. So that's the way we've done it now how do you develop a series of  messages one, pray, pray so God reveals you to the needs of the congregation  or, and or those that are attractive to the community. Be aware of cultural trends  in your community so that you can build a series of messages occasionally that  you can advertise, pray and think about what's going on in the congregation. Is  this a building program time? Are there internal problems that should be  addressed from the pulpit? Or the spiritual needs, like you know, using your  spiritual gift, gossip in the church, the need for spiritual growth that you  recognize we're dealing with babies a stewardship, that you develop series  within the congregation but also some that are attractive to the community that  you can reach out like a friend? Or what does it mean to live in a complex world. Guilt and shame is big in our community. And so you might want to do a series  of messages like that, if that's your situation, financial freedom, that's always an  attractive one, marriage, parenting, those kinds of things. What's attractive to the community? When do you develop those kinds? You pray you determine how  long the series is going to be. You do that by what are the primary scriptures?  What are the main points I want to make? Then you set the dates, and you 

capitalize on the best start times as I said, Rick Warren does Easter and  Christmas and big kickoffs. But you know, January is always a good time.  People are making resolutions. Where will that work? Develop a catchy title?  What's going to catch people's attention you might have a hopefully have a team of creative people that can bat things around and brainstorm with your his his  one churches, said skeletons in the closet. And the backside of this mailer says  no church would ever welcome you back. Not with your history, right? And they  talked about, you know, hey, we all fail. And we're inviting you to come to a  group of failures have come to know the grace of Jesus Christ, develop a catchy title, gather the resources you need, and prepare, and then share, and what I  mean by share, share with other people around you what you're doing, like the  music people that there will be tie ins for the music, particular kinds of music that will be used. Decorations is just a bunch of exercise equipment that a pastor  was doing a series, you know, building up growing in our faith building up  ourselves spiritually. And so they've got all of this kind of exercise equipment all  over the church so that it became a reinforcing to the message. And then all  there might be sharing of decoration, but drama, film clips, and that sort of thing. So here's my encouragement to you to preach when you can in series of  messages that will build the buzz, build the anticipation, but will also I think,  build spiritual growth. And you'll see God blessing that I believe we'll see you  next time.