New Feature: Sermon Editor
What is it? A new “Sermon” document type that can be created and opened from the Documents menu.
This document defines a set of document-like artifacts that cluster around single speech presentation given during a church service. These artifacts are:
- The text of the sermon, which for some scenarios will simply be the body of the speaker’s notes (or outline headings) meant to be read only by themselves, but for the primary scenario, will be a transcript of the words the preacher intends to speak, minus any internal private notes.
What is it for? The Sermon document interacts with the larger Faithlife ecosystem that already exists to support sermon presentation (Proclaim), provide public access to that sermon (Soundfaith), and informs a group of the sermon's existence (Faithlife Groups).
The Sermon document allows the author(s)to organize their thoughts into a document using a familiar word processing interface (not unlike Google documents). During the sermon, this document can either have been exported to Proclaim, PowerPoint, or to rich text for use in other word processing and desktop publishing software. After the sermon's delivery, the document is archived locally and can be searched by its content or metadata.
How does it work? The Sermon document is a standard Logos document type, so it works like any other Logos document, including sync.
How do you use it?
The Sermon document operates much like a standard word processing application:
- Add new paragraphs by hitting ENTER, type or paste text into them, and style those paragraphs with heading styles, block quote styles, and so on.
However, it has some special and unique features
- Editing slides, handouts, and questions
- Exporting directly to sermon-friendly tools
- Auto-detection of Bible references. Type ‘Gen 1:1’ in a normal paragraph, and a hyperlink to your preferred Bible will automatically be inserted.
- Auto-insertion of Bible references as “cards.” Type ‘Gen 1:1’ on its own line and then hit ENTER, and the text of Genesis 1:1 will be retrieved from your preferred Bible and inserted as a new specially-styled paragraph in place of the reference you just typed.
- Auto-extraction of Bible reference cards from typed or pasted text. Type a paragraph that has some Bible references in it. Then select across one or more of those references, and hit the “Insert reference cards from selection” button in the toolbar, and the text of each reference will be retrieved from your preferred Bible and inserted as a new card after the paragraph in question.
- Auto-inclusion of slides where you probably want them. When you make a new heading, a slide with that heading text is automatically inserted.
- Manual inclusion of more slides if you want them. You can also select text from the manuscript and press the “Insert slide from selection” and a new slide will be created
- “Smart art” templates. Double-click on any slide to open that slide in the Media tool (was Visual Copy) and edit your slide’s content or style. Hit the “Update sermon” button in the Media tool to post that change back to your sermon document.
- “Clippings” from Logos resources. Pasting text from a Logos resource into a non-empty paragraph will just paste the text (along with an auto-citation, if your settings imply that). Pasting text from a Logos resource into an empty paragraph will add a Clipping-like card for that text to the Sermon document. (User interface for converting the clipping card to regular text is in the works, but probably won’t make it by 7.0 launch. Pro tip: If you want just a new paragraph with some Logos content, type a space first, then paste, then delete the space.)
- Metadata, including topics covered, key passages, sermon summary/description, audience type, and so on. All searchable.
In a general sense, the ideal use case/scenario goes like this:
- Having researched using Logos Bible Software for a coming sermon, a pastor begins crafting the sermon with the Sermon Document
- Ideally, the pastor will write out a full manuscript, inserting headings at various levels (1–5), which will constitute the sermon's outline
- Creating a single manuscript with the Sermon Document automatically edits multiple documents all together at once:
- The sermon manuscript
- the sermon presentation consisting of a set of slides
- a “handout” to be printed and included as a bulletin insert (if any) or in the Faithlife Groups bulletin (if set up)
- a set of study or reflection “questions” meant to be printed and given out to small groups for further discussion, or to be posted online as a document for discussion group homework or personal reflection during the week.
- All of these artifacts share a common structure, that is, the set of headings that defines the sermon’s outline that appears in the sermon manuscript also appears in the slide list, the handout, and the questions. Thus, some paragraphs within the main sermon document editor will belong to the manuscript, some to the handout, and some to the questions. Slides that align on the left margin belong to the slide presentation. This is a key distinctive of the Sermon Editor feature in L7. It’s also fairly unusual as document editing software goes, as it requires thinking about how to edit four things at once. Under each heading, there may be some sermon text, some passages to print in the handout, some slides to show, and some questions having to do with the same topics and ideas addressed by that section of the sermon. Having these all in the same place is a convenient way to fulfill all your sermon related needs.
- Once the artifacts have been edited and previewed, they can be exported. This feature is intended to “work best” with Proclaim (and Soundfaith and Faithlife Groups), so it is easy to send the sermon to a Proclaim presentation with one click. The resulting slide presentation can be further edited.
- The sermon manuscript with its attendant metadata can be posted to Soundfaith with one click, and handouts and questions can be printed or exported to rich text for further manipulation in a word processing program of choice.
Comments
This thread has really gotten away from the original intent, which was to announce and discuss the new sermon editor. I have contributed to the various rabbit trails it is now going down.
It would probably be better to create a new thread for specific problems you are encountering using the new feature.
Hi George,
We'd like to investigate why exporting to PowerPoint is not working as expected for you, and to do that, log files would be extremely helpful. You can find instructions to collect log files here for Windows or here for Mac.
When you've finished collecting them, feel free to post them here and we'll take a look.
Thanks!
Ian Fisk
... when I select text outside of the Sermon Editor
Yes. This button is specifically referring to text selected within the Sermon document. You could use it if you wanted to create a slide that displays a specific phrase you were going to say.
If you Copy from a commentary / dictionary and paste into a new, empty paragraph in the document, it should automatically create a card with the copied text and create slides for you. If you don't want to create a card/slides, you can paste into an existing paragraph with text and it will just paste in the copied text.
I hope that helps!
Has anyone found a way to know when you have a slide versus other comments you might make? For example, in a Sunday School I may quote an author and want that in a slide but my comments later would not be quoted. Is it using the H1, H2, etc. for all of this? I am currently adding a line Advance Slide before a new slide and making that a prompt. I would love to know other's thoughts.
Michael, correct me if I am wrong - what I understand you are asking for is that in your exported text to a word-processor document you would like some way of knowing when you should advance slides on your presentation, without having these prompts in your headings (and therefore on the slides too).
I have found this to be a problem for years, sometimes finding that what I am saying has advanced while I haven't been keeping up to date with advancing slides, and I have to play catch-up and advance some slides to get them in sync with what I am saying (or sometimes having to go back a slide if I advance too far).
If there were some way of noting in the exported word-processor text when slides should be advanced, that would be great. If the result in the word processor export looked like the sermon editor 'all' view, that'd be great. Or, if a distinctive slide marker icon (or distinctive coloured text character(s)) were in line with the text, at the start of a heading, verse or quotation etc., that would work. An option to show/hide slide images/icons/markers would solve your problem, and be really helpful, I believe.
In the meantime, I think that the best option is to add lots of prompts to advance slides.
call or email customer service
Than you!
I emailed logoscustomersevice@logos.com a month ago but today I've just tried to email customersevice@logos.com.
Will see if I have better luck with this adress.
I emailed logoscustomersevice@logos.com a month ago but today I've just tried to email customersevice@logos.com.
Will see if I have better luck with this adress.
If you missed the 'r' in 'service' there as well, I doubt it. [;)]
Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2
please explain how you got through with the block quote cause i was wondering the same thing
please explain how you got through with the block quote cause i was wondering the same thing
Sorry but I don't understand
Please clarify, ideally in a new thread
I got sucked in to get the update too. Can anyone show me where it was shown that the Sermon Editor isn't included in the starter? I'm not impressed.
Is it possible to change the date on sermons in the sermon editor? I like the idea of putting my old sermons into Logos, but I'd like for them to display the date I preached them, not the date I created the file. I've already added the date in the "private info" about the sermon; I was just wondering if there were other options for organizing older sermons. Thanks!
I got sucked in to get the update too. Can anyone show me where it was shown that the Sermon Editor isn't included in the starter? I'm not impressed.
https://www.logos.com/logos-pro/sermon-editor or https://www.logos.com/compare/feature-sets are two places
I'm having a terrible time trying to make the "Handouts" feature functional. I just don't get it. I try to do a "fill-in" and the answer doesn't appear under "handout" whether or not I click "hid answers". I fail to see the point for it. It is just clunky and doesn't seem to be any better than opening up a Word doc and making my own.
Fill-in and handouts are distinct features that pair well together.
The handout button the toolbar lets you mark content to be included in the handout. By default, headings are automatically marked as included in the handout (but you can toggle them off as you like). You can set other paragraphs to be included in the handout view also. They'll render with a light blue background to help identify them.
To switch to handout view, click the handout button in the panel toolbar. This will show a filtered view containing only content that is marked to be included in a handout. You can print this filtered view directly, or export it to include it in whatever software you make your bulletin with.
The fill-in button lets you mark text with a special style that affects slide generation and allows the text to be toggled in handout view. Some people like to use the fill-in style in headings (which automatically create slides, and are already marked for handouts). You can also use the fill-in style on other paragraphs as well. The fill-in style doesn't require a paragraph to be included in the handout, nor does it automatically mark a paragraph as a handout block.
In handout view, you can toggle the visibility of the fill-in text with the hide answers button. This is to support the common use case of creating a handout with fill-in-the-blank statements that the congregation uses to follow along with the sermon. Not every church follows this model. Some churches may not use this particular feature of the Sermon editor.
Is that explanation helpful?
Really happy about the Sermon Editor. I have 13 Sermons/Bible Studies saved. Thank you for adding it and working on improvements.
Is there a way to organize sermons in folders?
Thanks
Elder/Pastor, Hope Now Bible Church, Fresno CA
I had a problem today with the Editor. While typing a thought and requesting a slide, I noticed that there were SEVERAL duplicates of the text that I had typed. When I tried to erase them, instead, the processor deleted only some of them and erased text that I wanted to keep. I don't know how it happened, so I cannot duplicate it. But it cost me two hours of sermon prep.
Is this now possible on L7? Looking to use some of our own media for slides and it would be great to include them in the sermon editor for easy use and export later.
Is this now possible on L7? Looking to use some of our own media for slides and it would be great to include them in the sermon editor for easy use and export later.
It is available for Logos Now subscribers - see https://community.logos.com/forums/t/136581.aspx for more details
Question, are there plans to add more text formatting features to the sermon editor? Color choice, fonts, and highlighting would be very useful.
Question, are there plans to add more text formatting features to the sermon editor? Color choice, fonts, and highlighting would be very useful.
Some of this is possible today - have a look at "Speaker Styles" if you haven't already.
I don't know why I never saw that. Thanks that is very helpful
Being able to edit the wpm would be great esp as many transition to the tool and don't have the page breaks to know approx how long this will take.We plan to add this in a future update.
I was just thinking about how awesome the sermon editor is......I now use it for every sermon. It saves a ton of paper and is very reliable. I would like to see the wpm setting be adjustable as Phil mentioned above. It's not major but I find my wpm more along the lines of 60 wpm (2400 words usually takes around 40 min)
Another cool idea that I think I heard somewhere is that there could be a little "pulpit" symbol on a passage that we have preached from (like a note icon). You could then click on it and go to the sermon.
This way if you are scrolling through a passage or referencing a passage you can look at what you said about it last time......
Another cool idea that I think I heard somewhere is that there could be a little "pulpit" symbol on a passage that we have preached from (like a note icon). You could then click on it and go to the sermon.
This way if you are scrolling through a passage or referencing a passage you can look at what you said about it last time.....
That would be nice[:)]
But I just wanted to check that you are aware these sermons do appear in various guides (assuming the required information is entered in the "sermon info" section) as well as in the Factbook. Look for the "Sermon Documents" subsection in the Sermons section
Yes, you are right. I guess that is good enougH . 
Another cool idea that I think I heard somewhere is that there could be a little "pulpit" symbol on a passage that we have preached from (like a note icon). You could then click on it and go to the sermon.
This way if you are scrolling through a passage or referencing a passage you can look at what you said about it last time.
I like this idea for when you are scrolling through a passage. (It's nice that they are in the passage guides too.)
I need help!
I clicked on a button, unfortunately I do not remember which (something with a view) and now everything is just white.
My sermon is gone and also the formatting bar.
I have already looked in the window menu, but find nothing to switch the View back to normal???
Hi Matthias - and welcome to the forums
Sorry to hear you are having problems
Try closing the Sermon Editor panel and opening it again.
If that doesn't resolve it please start a new thread in this forum for this
Graham
Hello Graham,
i tried, but the problem is not resolved.
I created a new thread. I hope anybody can help me.
I know now which button it was. It was the "outline view" button.
Does somebody has any idea?
Welcome to my world I have not been able to use sermon editor for almost a year now and other features in logos are not working either. It is fairly frustrating
Ok, the problem is solved.
It is a problem of the German surface.
If you switch the language in the settings in English, then you can open the editor normally and undo the setting.
Then you can switch the language back to German.
I am a new user of the sermon editor. I'm not a pastor but I'm putting together notes for a class and I really like this tool.
However, I wonder if there is a way to add the current document that I am working on to a link set?
When I add a verse reference, it changes to a link that I can hover over and view, which is really nice, but if I click on the link, it always opens a new Bible tab. I would like for it to open in the Bible tab I already have open and which is in a link set.
Is this possible? Am I doing something wrong when clicking? I want to jump back and forth between my bible tab, my other resources, and my document, without having new tabs opening all over the place.
Thanks
I am also new to the sermon editor. I tried it last night but I had several issues with it and gave up in frustration. I will be speaking on proverbs soon so I found the Lexham Background slides for proverbs in the media tool. Clicked on them and said send to new sermon document. The sermon editor opened but it had no slides. I had to manually add each one.
Then after that, I added in several verses I wanted to talk on but I couldn't move the slides around once they were in there. Lastly, I had Pr 2:4-5 as a slide but I wanted to change it to 2:3-5. When I clicked to edit the slide I had to type in everything manually.
Am I just dense/ignorant or is there a easier way to do this w/ less frustration?
Have you tried selecting "Send Hyperlinks Here" on your Bible tab dropdown menu?
Then after that, I added in several verses I wanted to talk on but I couldn't move the slides around once they were in there. Lastly, I had Pr 2:4-5 as a slide but I wanted to change it to 2:3-5. When I clicked to edit the slide I had to type in everything manually.
Am I just dense/ignorant or is there a easier way to do this w/ less frustration?
It might have been easier to delete the slides for Proverbs 2:4-5, then type Proverbs 2:3-5 (just the reference) and hit enter. This would then create the slides.
Have you tried selecting "Send Hyperlinks Here" on your Bible tab dropdown menu?
That should do it.
Clicked on them and said send to new sermon document. The sermon editor opened but it had no slides. I had to manually add each one.
When I try it the slides do appear in the sermon document - and if I edit them they are all there - but the view of the slides in the editor is blank. I suggest you start a new thread where we can explore this further
Then after that, I added in several verses I wanted to talk on but I couldn't move the slides around once they were in there.
That is currently a limitation - adding this functionality has been requested.
Thank you Philana and Graham. In regards to Philana, the reason why I didn't want to do that is because the new slide would be at the bottom and I cannot move the slides.
Graham, I'll try your suggestion later today or this weekend. I do hope we can move slides in the future. I guess I am too used to using PowerPoint. I really like the automatic adding of verses but that is all I can use at the moment. I think until future additions come, I'll create my verse slides in Logos and export to PowerPoint
Had no idea that "Send Hyperlinks Here" was even an option. I'll take a look at that, but it sounds like exactly what I need.
Thanks
That works perfectly. Thanks!
Thank you Philana and Graham. In regards to Philana, the reason why I didn't want to do that is because the new slide would be at the bottom and I cannot move the slides.
You can click on the passage block and hit delete or backspace. This will delete the slides and insert the cursor at that location. When you retype the verses and hit enter the new slides will regenerate at that location and not the end.
I hope this helps!
What is it? A new “Sermon” document type that can be created and opened from the Documents menu.
Thanks for this intro. I just upgraded to Logos 7 partially to check out the sermon editor and quickly became very disappointed. I was told that Logos had all these training/tutorial videos and the salesperson sent me a link to logos-pro where I would find them. However the sermon editor video was simply a fast-paced sales tool, not a tutorial on how to use it. I feel quite misled. However your summary gave me a bit more insight, so again thanks.
Have a great day,
jmac
Which video were you looking at?
What is it? A new “Sermon” document type that can be created and opened from the Documents menu.Thanks for this intro. I just upgraded to Logos 7 partially to check out the sermon editor and quickly became very disappointed. I was told that Logos had all these training/tutorial videos and the salesperson sent me a link to logos-pro where I would find them. However the sermon editor video was simply a fast-paced sales tool, not a tutorial on how to use it. I feel quite misled. However your summary gave me a bit more insight, so again thanks.
Hi Jim
If you scroll down on this page there is a series of training videos at the end that I am finding helpful (my thanks to Graham Criddle for these) https://www.logos.com/logos-pro/sermon-editor#tutorials
I have not been able to figure this out, but I was wondering if anyone knew how to link to a resource (instead of including the text in a card). In other words, I want to reference a resource as a linkable item in my library, but I don't want to include the text in my sermon document.
For example, I may want to say something like, "some commentators believe that..." and then link the commentary. Instead of copying the text and inserting a card into my sermon.
Thanks!