How I Use Logos Bible Software to Prepare a Sermon Series (with examples in Philippians)

Imagine you've got a new sermon series going through a book of the bible coming up. How should you prepare a sermon series quickly and comprehensively? Well, Logos can help.

In fact, here's the exact process I've used to help prepare for an upcoming sermon series on the book of Philippians that my church is doing this summer.

Prepare: listen, read, and re-read the book

Before I start my "proper preparation" I like to get an overview and feeling for the book.

To do that, I use the app Dwell to listen to the whole book and read through it in a paper Bible, marking the words or themes I see repeated. You can do the same thing in Logos but I like the experience of Dwell (it has good voice actors, many versions of the Bible and background music) and a paper bible.

1. Get an overview of the book with the Passage Guide (Philippians)

The next step is to get an overview of the book, its background, themes, purpose and key passages.

You should have some good ideas from your overview of the book, but now we can confirm them and check for details we missed using our Logos resources. Open a Passage Guide and set it to the book you are going to preach on (In my case Philippians).

This brings up

• Your top commentaries,
• key passages,
• people,
• places,
• sermons,
• themes,
• outlines,
• literary types
• ...and the list goes on and on.

Some of these aren't as useful for looking at a book outline (like the literary types) but they will be more useful when we come to prepare our individual sermons.

For my preparation, I saw that Philippians was written by Paul from prison to encourage the church in Philippi. The key themes are joy, humility, and partnership in the Gospel.

Create an overview note

This is something I do in the note-taking app, Obsidian. You can just use logos' notes, but Obsidian adds the ability to use a template to remind you what to include (although you could use text expander for that).

This note should include the information you got in the last step as well as a link to any core resources you will use. Here's what I include.

• Who wrote the book
• Where/when it was written
• The genre of the book
• The key themes
• The structure of the book
• Key resources

this is a useful quick reference.

2. Create a Collection for Your Philippians Study

Logos collections allow you to look up a limited set of your Logos resources.

With a logos collection for the particular book you are studying, you can access the most relevant resources faster and exclude others. Look for  

• Commentaries
• Sermons
• Illustration books,
• Bible backgrounds
• and any other relevant books.

3. Develop a sermon calendar

Split up the book into the sections you will preach on.

You can use resources from your passage guide like the outlines and sermon outlines. Alternatively, your reading through the book may have led you to an outline. Finally, you could use someone else's (from outside logos) outline to decide on the sections you will preach on.

Once you've got your outline, add the dates and themes for your sermons in Sermon Manager.

4. Develop Each Sermon Outline

With each sermon set, it's time to build a basic outline.

With Logos, you can use the Sermon Builder to keep your sermons attached to your calendar in Sermon Manager. At this point, my outlines are very basic with the main structure. If you have a particular format for how you preach (i.e. starting with a story then the passage, then expositing before finally recapping and prayer) then you can place that into your outlines.  

For the first sermon, you should probably include some notes on the background for the book but this can be reduced in later sermons.

Creating these outlines takes time, but it helps to save time later.

5. Research and Write Your Sermons

Now, you can prepare for each sermon either week by week or in bulk.

As I share the preaching calendar, I don't have to prepare each sermon which gives me long lead times for each sermon. You could use the Sermon Starter Guide to develop your sermons, or you could use one of the Sermon Workflows (Like Bryan Chapel's Christ-Centred Workflow) to help you research and write your sermon.

Whatever you do, make sure you save notes as you go that may be useful for your sermon or later study.

6. Practice and Preach Your Sermons

I like to write manuscripts but then go off-piste when preaching.

Once I've written my first draft, I read the whole thing out loud and edit the writing to make it better for speaking (considering pauses and where my translator will need to speak). As I have an iPad, I can then use my notes to preach by using Logo's Preaching Mode either with an outline or with a full manuscript.

I also export and share a Word document/pdf with my translator so they know the key passages, quotes, cross references etc.

7. Save Your Collection, Notes, Outlines, and Sermons for the Future

Sermons take a lot of work and research that can be useful and shared in other contexts.

By creating notes along the way, we've got the potential for social media posts, articles, devotionals, personal reflections, study topics and more. Not to mention resources for small group leaders and a sermon other preachers could use.  

Need some help? Here are 16 ideas for how you can repurpose a sermon.

Bonus: Don't forget to pray

I didn't explicitly mention prayer during this process as 1) I was focusing on the tools and using logos, 2) It's important to cover all things in prayer. From when you start reading, when you pick your sermon calendar, to when you preach, make sure you pray every step along the way.

Logos: a preacher's dream

Using Logos and following these steps for in-depth sermon preparation can transform how you study the Bible and preach the Scriptures. Walk through the process with the book of Philippians or any other book you want to preach on for a rewarding experience.

If you are interested in picking up a logos package to help you prepare sermons, check out my partner link. You'll save 10% and get a few extra resources for free.