Preachers, would this help with your sermon planning process?

Mark Barnes (Logos)
Mark Barnes (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 1,899

We're considering adding a feature to Sermon Manager that would help preachers with their sermon planning by analyzing what topics or Bible passages they've previously preached on. We've found many pastors want to give their congregations a varied diet, but that's not always easy to plan, especially for those who don't follow a lectionary.

One suggestion is to add charts or other analytics showing what books or passages have already been preached on and where the gaps might be. There's a very rough mockup below. (If we did this, we'd improve the design. It's only a proof-of-concept.):

If this is of interest, please let us know. Would it be important only to know what books have/have not been preached on, or would you need to know coverage within a particular book? And specifically, what are the most important questions you'd want such a feature to answer? Let us know in the comments.

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Comments

  • Dave Couch
    Dave Couch Member Posts: 164 ✭✭✭

    This would be interesting to me!

    I preach through whole books, so would be most interested in what books have not been preached on. I wonder also if genre, topic would be a useful metric too.

  • Richard Wardman
    Richard Wardman Member Posts: 1,356 ✭✭

    Yes!

  • Frank Sauer
    Frank Sauer Member Posts: 1,757 ✭✭✭

    That looks like a beneficial tool to at least have available

    Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 15 & Android 14

  • Justin Gatlin
    Justin Gatlin Member Posts: 2,049 ✭✭✭

    Yes, but for maximum usefulness it should be paired with the ability to filter sermons. For example, if I click on Jonah, it should add a facet showing only sermons on Jonah.

  • Richard Wardman
    Richard Wardman Member Posts: 1,356 ✭✭

    It would be great to see gaps at multiple levels - books of the Bible, genres, and maybe even sections within books. For example, I might have only preached through the narrative section of Daniel but not the Prophetic section. Or it would be good to see if I have mainly preached from Pauline epistles but not Petrine or Johannine etc.

    What would be a game changer is if that information could be shared between team members (ie Assistant Pastors) so that collectively we could identify areas that are yet to be covered.

    Could this even be drilled down to topics!? I'm just thinking that it could be really powerful to know that certain topics (such as hell, sexuality etc) have never been addressed. I guess that's largely dependent on the user inputting that kind of data.

    This is a great idea, though.

  • Phelix Lockhart
    Phelix Lockhart Member Posts: 63 ✭✭

    Yes, this would be great!!!

  • Justin Gatlin
    Justin Gatlin Member Posts: 2,049 ✭✭✭

    This seems like a useful AI augmented feature: "You've spent a lot of time on the Epistles and no time in the Old Testament in the last 18 months. Overall, your topics have been centered around justification, baptism, giving, and marriage, with no coverage of sanctification, evangelism, or eschatology. See more?"

  • Richard Wardman
    Richard Wardman Member Posts: 1,356 ✭✭

    Yeah I thought that as well - let AI do the heavy lifting to identify themes and topics in your sermons. I love that idea!

  • xnman
    xnman Member Posts: 2,832 ✭✭✭

    I like this idea of being able to click on a book like "Jonah" and see just sermons in Jonah that I've used. Also maybe have a list of "Topics" that I create and then be able to click on a "Topic" and see sermons for that "Topic". This would be of a great help!!! 😍

    xn = Christan man=man -- Acts 11:26 "....and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch".

    Barney Fife is my hero! He only uses an abacus with 14 rows!

  • xnman
    xnman Member Posts: 2,832 ✭✭✭

    xn = Christan man=man -- Acts 11:26 "....and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch".

    Barney Fife is my hero! He only uses an abacus with 14 rows!

  • Aaron Hamilton
    Aaron Hamilton Member Posts: 906 ✭✭✭

    The above seems very useful for expository preaching. I imagine tracking for topical preaching (very common) would be far more difficult. Perhaps AI could help sort sermons into predefined categories.

  • DAL
    DAL Member Posts: 10,669 ✭✭✭

    If you guys can add these graphics why can’t you add pictures that zoom in and out to the sermon builder?

    DAL

  • Lew Worthington
    Lew Worthington Member Posts: 1,538 ✭✭✭

    For the last few years, I used the lectionary most of the time. Perhaps having that optionally integrated into the tool would be beneficial for some.

  • Ken Shawver
    Ken Shawver Member Posts: 516 ✭✭

    Mark, yes this would be interesting to have, but the ability as some have mentioned to delve deeper into what has been preached on a particular book, topic or theme would be of additional assistance. I would want to know where i have been light so as to give a more complete view of God's Word.

    In Christ,

    Ken

    Lenovo Yoga 7 15ITL5 Touch Screen; 11th Gen Intel i7 2.8Ghz; 12Gb RAM; 500Gb SDD;WIN 11

    http://wiki.logos.com/

  • Frank Sauer
    Frank Sauer Member Posts: 1,757 ✭✭✭

    I thought this was already possible in Sermon Manager via the Filter function. I was able to filter by Book of the Bible for the few sermons that I have imported to Logos.

    Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 15 & Android 14

  • Justin Gatlin
    Justin Gatlin Member Posts: 2,049 ✭✭✭

    It is, I just mean that it should be integrated with the analysis tool, where there should be an intuitive way to apply the filter.

  • Jerry Bush
    Jerry Bush Member Posts: 1,124 ✭✭✭

    I would absolutely use this.

    iMac (2019 model), 3Ghz 6 Core Intel i5, 16gb Ram, Radeon Pro Graphics. 500GB SSD.

  • Rob Bruce
    Rob Bruce Member Posts: 81 ✭✭

    Yes! I would love it.

  • Stephan Thelen
    Stephan Thelen Member Posts: 608 ✭✭✭

    No, it wouldn’t help me, because we share the preaching ministry and not everyone use logos

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,403

    I see it as much as a Bible Study Builder tool … perhaps even more than for homilies when a lectionary is used.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Antony Brennan
    Antony Brennan Member Posts: 746 ✭✭✭

    @Mark Barnes (Logos)

    You might want to consider being able to filter by timeframes. You would probably want to be able to look at the last year, the last month, or some custom timeframe parameters. Location filter could also be a consideration for some.

    You may have already considered that

    👁️ 👁️

  • Marvin Mitchell
    Marvin Mitchell Member Posts: 61 ✭✭
    edited November 27

    I like most of the ideas thus far. I'm curious if we could have a combination Sermon/Bible Study or a separate tool for each. I'm still thinking of a Bible Study Manager as well

  • David P. Moore
    David P. Moore Member Posts: 610 ✭✭

    I've always wanted this since Sermon Manager came out. I've thought of the feature as more like a report, though, maybe with charts and graphs, telling you which books you preached on the most, the average length of your sermons, the most recurring topics preached on, and things like that. The data is already there… it's just a matter of pulling it and displaying it in a usable report that could be generated whenever desired. With that data presented that way, it could then be more actionable…whereby pastors can target other Bible books or topics not explored yet, for example.

  • David Taylor, Jr.
    David Taylor, Jr. Member Posts: 4,377 ✭✭✭

    Yes, I would be interested in this.

  • Nathan Parker
    Nathan Parker Member Posts: 772 ✭✭✭

    I'm not a preacher, but this does look neat!

    Dr. Nathan Parker

  • Darcy S. Van Horn
    Darcy S. Van Horn Member Posts: 13 ✭✭

    This looks interesting. I think I might find it helpful in my preaching ministry, especially if some of the features suggested above made it possible to sort with more granularity the Bible books I have preached from. If it could be used for Bible studies as well, that would make it even more useful.

  • Jonathan Bradley
    Jonathan Bradley Member Posts: 1,006 ✭✭✭

    I’d use it. I think it could potentially be greatly beneficial.

    Pastor, Mt. Leonard Baptist Church, SBC

  • Matthew R. Funk
    Matthew R. Funk Member Posts: 6 ✭✭

    Please do it!

  • Dan Morris
    Dan Morris Member Posts: 12 ✭✭

    Love the idea! It would be great to have this.

  • Christopher Randall
    Christopher Randall Member Posts: 27 ✭✭

    Please! This would be very useful.