How to design a sermon series

There are some church leaders who only plan and prepare each sermon in the week before, being committed to the idea that God speaks in the moment, and they don’t want to silence him.

 I respect that, but my experience is that planning a sermon series ahead of time, doesn’t do that. In fact, if God is prayerfully involved in the planning, he overrides both the micro and macro elements so that the teaching matches the overall and the immediate needs of the church.

So how do we go about designing a sermon series?

Balanced diet

The first step is to have a longer review and plan of your preaching plan.  This is a bit of an endless spiral, but you do need to think about a healthy balanced diet for church.  I’m going to suggest a working day at the end of this post, but it’s going to include reviewing a number of topics.

Sit down with your diary for the last year or two, and ask:

What was and is your ratio between Old and New Testaments?  What would you hope it to be?  And what has been the reality?

Old Testament

Are you giving people the plot of the OT, from Genesis to the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the Exile?  And are you doing more than telling the story, but highlighting the key turning points in the story?  Are you consistently showing people how this passage or that leads us to anticipate Jesus?

If that makes you feel a little uncertain, join the club.  I was an embarrassing number of years into ordained ministry before it dawned on me that the Exile might be as important as the Exodus.  If this is a new idea for you, Id recommend Graeme Goldsworthy; if you want to take it further, have a look at Greidanus, 

I remember an evangelist who kept insisting in preaching Christ from every OT passage. ‘Can’t you preach the Old Testament without mentioning Jesus?’, he was asked.  ‘Sure’, he replied cheerfully,’ but why would you want to?’

There are challenges here not just in the length of some books, but in their literary style (eg, apocalyptic), relevance (the Law), content (Job), even apparent godlessness (Esther).  We need to have all those kind of issues on simmer, in the background.  It needs to be our habit to solve this satisfactorily for ourselves, so that we can deal with it satisfactorily for others

Then there are the extremely challenging stories, where contemporary people balk at issues previous generations might have not thought much about.  The Conquest of the Land, for instance, is charged in today’s political climate, but in our legal climate too – could Joshua be charged with war crimes? What about slavery, or polygamy, or levirite marriage?

The people listening to you will be asking those questions, and we do them a disservice by ducking them. More than that, there are those who will lure people out of their confidence in the scriptures, by asking and answering in a non-orthodox way, and unless we have better responses, we will lose good Christians to revisionist views

All of which is a case for general, ongoing reading and thinking.  We do need to have a genuine and generally growing grasp of the issues in bringing all the OT through Christ to us. Jesus said that good teachers have treasures both old and new, (Matthew 13:52) and that means we can show people we have thought about deeply, and for many years, but also new insights that have surprised and delighted us. That is a general truth, but I think it relates particularly to the OT where the journey to Jesus needs explicit attention.

Top tip: if you’re on your own, or preaching in multiple series, it’s worth identifying which are your Treasure Old options, and which your Treasures New.  Because there are some weeks where you only have time to cook one decent Sunday meal, and the other one needs to be microwaved.

There are some weeks where you only have time to cook one decent Sunday meal, and the other one needs to be microwaved.

Oh, and this is double edged.  And its about more than preaching the Old Testament. If you bias towards Treasures New, you risk being unmoored from classic orthodoxy, and becoming shallow, or sailing in untested waters, or a novelty seeker. But if you bias towards Treasures Old, you will become predictable, stale, and dull. Even a  good preacher will run the risk of only preaching to a fan club which likes the reruns. A lesser preacher might become lazy.

New Testament

A similar set of questions unfurl for the New Testament, but it is probably easier to give a satisfactory answer.  It’s a shorter set of books, and they more easily point to Jesus. Nevertheless, it’s still worth monitoring our gaps and our biases.

One top tip I can give you, is to have a default gospel to work through.  At the moment we are working slowly through Matthew, a few chapters at a time. We’ll stop shortly to begin a new series, but the next time we are planning, taking the story of Matthew further is an option we always have on the table.  Matthew’s structure makes this an ideal gospel use for this purpose.

And within that, you’ll have to answer the inevitable questions.  How is you balance between Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Revelation? Are there books you keep avoiding because they’re too difficult (James, anyone?) Or genres (anything after Revelation 4?)

Honestly, the only way to tackle this is to have a decent view of the next 18th months; which, I freely admit is a lovely idea, but really hard to implement. Not impossible, but you need to be intentional

In addition, we need to see that the question over plausibility has moved with our culture.  Our culture’s common view of slave-ownership, sexual freedom, personal identity, gender roles and so on, has made the New Testament as questionable as the Old.  And don’t think that your church is an exception. 

Our culture has made the New Testament as questionable as the Old.

Verse by verse?

This is a bit of a buzzword in some circles, and I’m probably going to get some grief by what I’m about to say.  It seems to imply a seriousness of approach (which I hope I would share), and a visible practice of not avoiding the difficult passages (which I hope I would also share).

But I don’t think a verse-by-verse approach always serves the text well.

Narrative moves at a pace; sometimes our eyes will rest on a scene or a saying, but there are plenty of occasions where we need to pick up speed, and encourage people to feel the movement.

Narrative moves in multiple lines.  There are simultaneous stories running, and we are deliberately left hanging with one, as we pick up another, and the tension rises.

If you’re a Lord of the Rings geek, you’ll be familiar with this, as Frodo and Sam, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, even Gandalf, all have their own plot lines, and we are aware that even while we are discovering what is happening over here, we (and the characters) are in ignorance of what is happening over there.

Then you have Proverb, or Poetry, or Prophecy, each with genre-specific, and author-idiosyncratic rules.  How boring to make them all the same.

Here’s my guess as to how this all started. Actually, I have several.

It might have begun with our habit of preaching through the letters.  Now I think this is a very good approach to most of them (James and 1 John have more complex styles, I think).  They move logically and in sequence.  Above all, there is the crystalline structure of Romans, where there is not a misplaced step in an obvious logical, quasi-legal argument. 

Why quasi-legal?  I was once involved in a series of debates in mosques, in which I was open to serious questions for the floor.  Once we got past some more obvious points and drilled downing the gospel itself, the objections seemed weirdly familiar.  “Abraham was right with God, because he was circumcised and kept the law” (aka a good Muslim), said someone,  Well, I replied, was Abraham declared right with God before or after he was circumcised?  “If you’re right about forgiveness, we can all go and sin more because that just multiples what you called ‘grace,” said someone else. Interesting point, I said, but let me show you why that doesn’t work…

I felt as though Paul was at my side, silently passing me notes

I felt as though Paul was at my side, silently passing me notes

Preaching verse-by-verse through Romans is the most natural way to tackle it.

But we should be careful.  The classic cliche is to take that approach to Ephesians, decide when you rough it out that it needs to be two series rather than one, and then this year preach Ephesians 1-3 (all doctrine, no application), and next year 4-6 (all application no doctrine).  I exaggerate – especially about the first half, where you could argue that it is more about prayed-doctrine than doctrine simple, but you get my point.

Verse-by verse also works really well for the gospels, and especially the Synoptics.  I think this is because they are not constructed with any narrative tension,  It’s not that they don’t have a plot, or that it’s familiar, but that the approach I think of as split-screen (holding up the main plot to show us a side story, or running two stories in parallel , which will meet in time) just doesn’t happen.  Jesus is the main character, and apart from that one exception of Herod’s banquet (which does indeed raise the tension, and lean us forwards), he is in the spotlight all the way through.

Verse by verse does work for John, although you will find there are unexpected speeding-ups and slowing-downs.  It’s a bit like going for a run along a route you normally drive.  You become aware of climbs and dips.

But verse-by-verse has a few more problems even with Acts.  Let’s be honest – many preachers struggle with how to preach the stories between the sermons. Then there are the repetitions, around Paul’s conversion, and his defence. Or the shipwreck. Or the abrupt ending.

These demand a greater literary sensitivity than we might think, and maybe a more careful approach. If you’re interested, I wrote about teaching and preaching from Acts, in The Word of His Grace.

Doctrines

How do you handle teaching doctrines?

You could take an ‘it’s incidental’ approach.  So, you preach predestination when the passage teaches that, and our own responsibility when that arises.

But you’ll know that after a while you’ll need to synthesis some truths.  To present the biblical case for the Doctrine the Trinity, or the work the Spirit.  Verse-by-verse won’t get you there.

And here’s where I start to sound like a cracked record.  Deep reading, in the background, over years.

Think elite athletes.  Divers, with seconds in the air before they hit the water.  How long to practice?  Gymnasts with two minutes on the pommel horse or the mat.  They give years for that moment.

Now, you and I don’t have that once-in a lifetime, seconds-in-the-spotlight issue.  But we do know that a twenty-five minute sermon takes more than twenty-five minutes to prepare,  Actually, we know that it takes more than twenty-five hours.  It too takes years.

So, we need to be reading doctrine- Systematic, thematic, past and present.

I have a number of Systematics on my shelves – and you do as well.  But have you chosen them to disagree? Because the best case for Arminianism won’t be made by a Calvinist. Credo-baptists and Covenant-baptists need to breathe their own air. Personally, and as a Brit, I believe fervently in gun-control – but I still need to read, um, Wayne Grudem.

And then you need the habit of patient, slow reading.  At the moment, for me, it’s Bavinck.  What a treasure! But you can’t speed read him if you’re going to do him justice.

And here’s another problem if we don’t plan ahead. Let’s say you want to look at the Trinity, over four weeks.  Where do you start?  Or rather, where do you stop?  How do you knowledgeably cut, select, arrange, the material to best make the orthodox case?

What you can’t do is use the phrase from one speaker at my university CU: ‘Lastly, and fifteenthly.’

You can’t use the phrase from one speaker at my CU: ‘Lastly, and fifteenthly.’

Like a beautiful Japanese flower arrangement, skilful selectivity is the key, and that takes knowledge and skill, both acquired over time.

If you’re starting to panic about how much time this is going to take, let me make this a little bit worse.

Actually, just worse.

Questions

I reckon it has to be legitimate to deal with the questions of our day, on proper biblical grounds.  And that will take hard thinking.

I love both Augustine and Calvin – but neither is the place to turn on a Christian perspective on social media or climate change.  Actually, I’ll take that back on social media – they do have things to say, especially Augustine, but not directly, and not in full range of the issue.

My handbook starting out was John Stott’s Issues Facing Christians Today. But even there, the questions have slipped, shifted, and been added to.  It’s a really good model of how to approach difficult questions, but not the freshest way to find them.

Which means, once again, we are thinking ahead, reading ahead, being pioneers.

The trouble is we are all limited.  The good news is that after a while you will learn where to go for particular issues, who is writing and who makes sense.  But even learning that will take time.

So I suggest you identify an area with a number of questions – like AI, or climate change, and read just three leading non-Christian books, and three Christian ones.  Then do your own work.

If you don’t read and think, you’ll be stale and self-referential.  But if you don’t set limits at the outset, you’ll never reach closure.  Just three.  But world class.  And you’ll be ready for next year.

And then some questions never go away, do they?

My big book at the moment, apart from Bavinck, is Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. Don’t expect a full review of that massive work, by the way, though I may give you glimpses over time.

But I’m struck by how many times the lesson comes through, that the question (more, the experience) of suffering in the face of the claim of God’s goodness, is a massive defeater belief (to quote Keller).  Time and time again, from the Lisbon earthquake, through the Somme, through Auschwitz and Hiroshima, famine, war zone and now we can add, a global pandemic. 

Which means the issue of evil, suffering – however we construe it – must be something we address straightforwardly and frequently.  Our members will meet it in the staff room, online, and by the hospital bed.  The cultural narrative says that this disproves God’s existence, or at least either his power or his goodness.

The issue of evil, suffering, must be something we address straightforwardly and frequently.

It’s part of that balanced diet.

Pastoral need

And then there’s that thing I could never decide for you: your own pastor’s sense of the needs, the life-issues of the sheep under your care.

I once saw a lovely cartoon of an earnest preacher in full flow, with maybe three people scattered round the building, as he denounced, “I know what you’re thinking – Sabellianism!”

Laugh, by all means.  But cry too, because Sabellianism is a … I digress

We all need to make sure our sermons ‘land’.  Thinking we’re doing our job while we’re actually preaching irrelevance is a foolish task.  But if you’ve never seen that glazed look in people’s eyes, you’re very blessed – and probably Craig Groschel.

But in addition to making sure they ‘land’, we need to ensure they ‘take off’ too.

Our church went through a hard season, before the pandemic.  Several of our well-known members were going through long-term, terminal illness.  When they came, we saw their pain and illness (and faith, and courage).  When they were absent, we missed them and feared the worst.

It was an ashen season.

Only a fool could have ignored that, and preached a twelve-part series on the Types of the Tabernacle.  (If your going to go all huffy on me and say that the Types of the Tabernacle are very pastorally focussed, I admire your skill and biblical knowledge, but I reckon there are good cookies on a lower shelf).

You need to check the mood of the church.  Is there a spiritual season you are going through, which you need to address? 

I’ve written about applying the bible to church, in Cutting to the Heart.

Children in?

The children need a balanced diet too – and they do need meat and veg, not just sweets.  You might have a regular habit of all-age services, or a special summer series.  You might be a church that has everyone in all the time.

So, meat and veg: by which I mean, (a) don’t neglect the fact that they do need to know the stories, because otherwise they wont know about Noah or Daniel, but (b) they need to know that those are stories of people teaching us about Jesus, robustly. And they also need doctrines and they have questions…

The plan

So, you’ll need your 18 month to two year plan (ideally the latter), a diary, (to look back as well as forward) a bible, and loads of paper. I take A3 rather than A4, and preferably graph paper – it makes making lines easier! Lots of coloured pencils and an eraser. And time. I simply can’t do this on a screen.  That comes later, when we distil it.

I reckon you can slice the year up like this: Christmas to Easter can be one series (or two, if you’re intentional about Lent), Likewise Easter to summer.  School hols another, and then the autumn has the longest run until you enter the Christmas Zone.  We find that that’s our longest unbroken series.

In our church we have a monthly All age series, following its own pattern, and occasional interruptions for the most major events like Christmas or Easter.

You can melt the other blocks into each other, of course, but that pattern is our normal starting point.

And then think, pray, plan, move ideas round.

I reckon you should settle on one major book to teach, which will require some serous prep in advance.  I have written a blog post about that here. You can’t do that for everything, because you’re finite. But take one, and tackle it seriously.

Likewise, one issue I’ve been provoked into thinking about Perfectionism in our culture, recently.  It’s everywhere, and spiritually toxic.  Especially in church. What’s it about, and how should we tackle it? Three books later I have loads of ideas, notes, quotes, and diagrams.  I can’t do that for every series, but if I do that for one a year, I’m doing well.

So there you go – a number of issues to keep in place as you design your sermon series for 2024 and beyond.

But what have I missed? I’d love to know your views as well. Pile in!