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EPISODE NOTES
One of the best ways to help your congregation be discipled is by bringing intentionality to your sermons by crafting them into a series. But where do you even start? This week, Dr. Derwin Gray is going to give you the inside scoop on his creative process for developing a sermon series. By sharing his insights and experiences, you will be encouraged to adopt a proactive mindset as a church leader and preacher. Dr. Gray emphasizes the significance of preparation and prayer in delivering engaging and Christ-centered messages. He’ll show you how crafting a sermon series can help you grow as a communicator and can nurture a transformed church that can have a profound impact on the world.
Here are a few of the practical things you’ll learn in this episode:
- Unleash Your Creative Process for Sermon Series Development: Unlock innovative methods to craft engaging and impactful sermon series that resonate deeply with your congregation.
- Plan Ahead for Sermon Series with Precision: Master the art of strategic planning for sermon series, ensuring each message aligns seamlessly with your church’s vision and goals.
- Understand The Power Of A Sermon Series- Pastor Derwin helps us understand the rhythms and power of focusing our teaching on a single idea or theme for an extended period.
A Few Key Moments You Won’t Want To Miss:
00:01:23 – The Creative Process of Developing a Sermon Series
00:05:34 – Non-negotiables and Specific Audience for Sermon Series
00:10:54 – Importance of Margin and Proactive Preparation
QUOTES
- The Holy Spirit allows us to be proactive and not just reactive. If I could say this respectfully, don’t blame your lack of action on the Holy Spirit. – Dr. Derwin Gray
- In preparing a sermon series, I walk through and answer multiple questions to prepare and then share those with the staff, specifically our creatives, our comms team, and our music team. – Dr. Derwin Gray
PODCAST RESOURCES
• More from Derwin: www.derwinlgray.com and www.transformationchurch.tc/podcast
• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
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• Subscribe on YouTube
• Subscribe on Amazon Music
• The ChurchLeaders Podcast Network
CONNECT WITH DERWIN
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/derwinlgray
• Instagram: @derwinlgray
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If you’ve been impacted by this podcast, please leave a rating and a review, and share with someone in your life.
SHOW TRANSCRIPTION
00:00:00
You know, it’s a changing world. And one of the things that help us understand the changing world is research. And so as churches have been struggling and families may be disconnected and sometimes drifting away from the church, we’re kind of dealing with some of the questions of where do we go from here? And the Communio nationwide survey on faith and relationships really kind of points to the family decline and how it relates to faith decline in the United States. Actually, the survey has three key issues that are impacting our society today.
00:00:27
Go to communio.org/study to download the nationwide study on faith and relationships. Welcome to the Transforming The Church podcast hosted by Dr. Derwin
Gray. We pray that through this podcast, you will be empowered to live on mission with Jesus and lead courageously. Here’s your host, Doctor Derwin L. Gray.
I was asking questions from ministry leaders on social media, and one of the questions I asked was this. Would it be helpful if I talked about the creative process of doing a
sermon series for a lot of young preachers, or just preachers in general, or anybody that communicates? But specifically, if you are a lead pastor, preaching is challenging. It’s difficult, but being able to plan and to process ahead, it’s like, how do I develop a sermon series?
00:01:23
So what I want to do is I want to walk you through the creative process that I have, along with my team, of developing a sermon series. Right? And if you like it, please share it. But most importantly, if you like it, implement it. And I believe that it can help you become an even more effective communicator of the Gospel.
00:01:44
So I’m going to show you this sermon series we started 2024 off with, called My Name Is. And basically, it’s a sermon series on the names of God. Why? Because the names of God describe the actions and character of God. The names of God describe the saving accomplishments of God.
00:02:06
For example, the name Jesus, or Yeshua/ Joshua/ Yahweh, is my salvation. Jesus’ name describes his saving action in the world. All right, so I’m going to walk you through this
process. All right, My Name Is a Transformation Church sermon series.
00:02:25
About this series, here’s the first question I asked myself. Single thought, what’s the one concept you are trying to teach in this series? So I wrote this. The first value at
Transformation Church is we are committed through the Spirit’s enabling power to teach a high and lofty view of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All our actions,
teaching, prayer, mission, and spiritual formation will be driven by our God.
00:03:01
This sermon series will root our community in this truth and give insight to unbelievers on who God is and why He created us. Here’s the next question. How do you want
people to think head, to feel heart, to do hands during this series as a result of it? The way I answered it was this way. I want the TC family guests who are believers, guests
who are unbelievers to see who God is by His names.
00:03:32
His names describe His actions. I want our TC family guests who are believers and guests who are unbelievers to feel secure and trusting of God based on his name and
his actions. I want our TC family guests and believers and guests who are unbelievers to act in faith and follow Jesus and discipleship and his mission of reaching the loss. So
those are a few questions. And then here’s the next one.
00:04:01
What’s the mood of the series? Confident, hopeful, trusting. Excited. So now, as I’m communicating and answering these questions, the production team and our creatives and the music team and the entire staff is getting a vibe for where we’re going. The next question is this.
00:04:22
Does this series have a specific audience or people that we want to reach? And every time it’s this, we want to reach the church, the de-churched, unbelievers, people who are suspicious of God and the church? We’re trying to reach everybody. In this day and age, you have a lot of people who are de-churched. After Covid, they just stopped going.
00:04:45
You’ve got people who are church. They’re looking for something else. You’ve got unbelievers. You got people suspicious of God. You have an incredible kaleidoscope of
different types of people that we just know a little bit about but that God knows intimately, and so we want to join him in that process.
00:05:04
The next question is this. What nonnegotiables do you have? Everything that TC does will reflect our value of excellence. People will clearly know why we’re doing this series, what the series is, and when to act on what’s experienced through this series.
00:05:34
The Transforming the Church Podcast is a part of the Church Leaders Podcast Network, which is dedicated to resourcing church leaders in order to help them face the
complexities of ministry. Church Leaders Podcast Network supports pastors and ministry leaders by challenging assumptions, providing insights, and offering practical
steps that will help church leaders navigate a variety of cultures and context. Learn more at churchleaders.com/podcastnetwork. Last question what inspired you to do this series? The start of the year is a great time to locate people in the Triune God, His history, His intentions for his people. So let me pause here. I’m under the theological belief that the Holy Spirit is working and moving.
