Preachers, would this help with your sermon planning process?

Mark Barnes (Logos) · November 27

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.

Dave Couch · November 27

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 · November 27

Yes!

Frank Sauer · November 27

That looks like a beneficial tool to at least have available

Justin Gatlin · November 27

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 · November 27

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 · November 27

Yes, this would be great!!!

Justin Gatlin · November 27

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1346096#Comment_1346096

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 · November 27

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1346122#Comment_1346122

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 · November 27

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1346095#Comment_1346095

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!!! 😍

xnman · November 27

Aaron Hamilton · November 27

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 · November 27

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 · November 27

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 · November 27

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.

Frank Sauer · November 27

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1346095#Comment_1346095

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.

Justin Gatlin · November 27

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1346161#Comment_1346161

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 · November 27

I would absolutely use this.

Rob Bruce · November 27

Yes! I would love it.

Stephan Thelen · November 27

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

MJ. Smith · November 27

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

Antony Brennan · November 27

@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 · 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 · November 27

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. · November 27

Yes, I would be interested in this.

Nathan Parker · November 28

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

Darcy S. Van Horn · November 29

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 · November 30

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

Matthew R. Funk · December 1

Please do it!

Dan Morris · December 6

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

Christopher Randall · December 6

Please! This would be very useful.

Preachers, would this help with your sermon planning process?

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