How to preach a series without repeating yourself
A series is the most efficient way to preach and the easiest way to repeat yourself. By the fourth week the same sentence arrives in different clothes, the same illustration well gets visited again, and the landing sounds like the last three landings. This is not a creativity problem. It is a planning problem, and the fix is a single page filled in before the first sermon is written.
Why series repeat
It helps to name the three ways it happens, because each has a different cure.
- The same sentence in different clothes. The series has one big idea, and every week the sermon's one sentence turns out to be a paraphrase of it. The congregation hears the same claim six times and stops listening by the third. Cure: write each week's sentence before writing any sermon, side by side, and forbid paraphrases.
- The same illustration well. Every preacher has three or four places they go for stories: the farm, the hospital, their children, the one hard year. In a series, without noticing, the farm appears in weeks one, three and five. Cure: a ledger.
- The same landing. The ending you are most comfortable with becomes the ending of every sermon. In a series the congregation can predict it by week three. Cure: decide what may repeat on purpose and what may not, and the landing is on the may-not list.
Plan the sentences before the sermons
This is the whole method. Before you write week one, write the one sentence for every week of the series, on one page, in the words you would actually say. Then read them together and apply one rule: no two may be paraphrases of each other. If two are, one of them is not a sermon yet, and it is better to find that out now than in week five.
The page also holds the series sentence, which is the one thing that is allowed to repeat, and a line for each week's shape and illustration, which are the things that are not.
Series planner
- Series
- Title, passage or book, number of weeks, first and last Sunday.
- The series sentence (full sentence, your words)
- The one thing the whole series is for. This may be said every week, once, in the same words. It is the only sentence that may repeat.
- Week 1: passage, sentence, shape, illustration
- The text. The one sentence for this week, which must not paraphrase the series sentence or any other week. The shape (text-first, question-first, or story-first). The illustration, and where it comes from.
- Week 2
- Same four lines.
- Week 3, and so on
- Same four lines each. Leave a week's sentence blank rather than writing a paraphrase to fill it; a blank is a warning, a paraphrase is a trap.
- Illustration ledger
- Every story used in the series, with its week. Before adding one, read the ledger.
- May repeat
- The series sentence. The benediction or closing charge, if you use one. A recurring reading. Nothing else.
- May not repeat
- The landing. The opening. Any illustration. Any one sentence.
A worked example
Six weeks in Philippians, for an ordinary autumn. The sentences are deliberately plain.
Philippians, six weeks, starting the first Sunday in October.
The series sentence: Paul is writing from a prison cell about joy, and he means it.
Week 1, 1:1-11. Sentence: Paul's joy begins with the people he is writing to, not with his circumstances. Shape: text-first. Illustration: the first letter I received in a hard season, from someone who did not know how hard it was.
Week 2, 1:12-30. Sentence: The thing that was meant to stop the gospel is the thing that spread it. Shape: question-first (what do you do when the plan fails?). Illustration: the year the church roof failed.
Week 3, 2:1-11. Sentence: Christ went down before he went up, and he asks the same of us. Shape: text-first, slowly, because the hymn deserves it. Illustration: none; the text carries it.
Week 4, 2:12-30. Sentence: Working out your salvation looks like Timothy and Epaphroditus, which is to say it looks like showing up. Shape: story-first (Epaphroditus nearly died delivering a gift). Illustration: the deacon who drives the same three people every Sunday.
Week 5, 3:1-21. Sentence: Paul counted his best credentials as loss, and most of us have never counted ours at all. Shape: question-first. Illustration: my own résumé, honestly.
Week 6, 4:1-23. Sentence: Contentment is learned, and Paul learned it in a cell, which means it can be learned here. Shape: text-first. Illustration: the widow who told me she had "enough" and meant it.
Ledger check: the roof, the deacon, the widow, the letter, the résumé. No well visited twice. Week 3 has none on purpose.
Read the six sentences together. None is a paraphrase of another, and none is a paraphrase of the series sentence. That is the test, and it took twenty minutes, before any sermon was written.
Vary the shape, not just the words
Even with six different sentences, six sermons built the same way will feel like one long sermon. Three shapes, rotated, are enough to keep a series from settling into a groove.
- Text-first. Read the passage, walk through it, arrive at the sentence. The default, and the right shape for dense passages that need to be heard slowly.
- Question-first. Open with the question the congregation is already asking, then go to the text for the answer. Good for passages that seem abstract until you show what they are for.
- Story-first. Open with the illustration, then find its shape in the text. Use sparingly, once or twice a series; it is the most memorable shape and the easiest to overuse.
Write the shape on the planner next to the sentence. If three weeks in a row say text-first, change one.
Keep the ledger
The illustration ledger is a list, nothing more: the story and the week it was used. Its power is that you read it before adding to it. The farm, the hospital and the children are not bad wells; they are good wells, which is why you keep going back. The ledger makes you notice the third visit before the congregation does.
It also has a second use. When you come back to the same book in five years, the ledger tells you what you have already said about it, which is the only reliable cure for repeating yourself across years rather than weeks.
Reuse on purpose
Not all repetition is a fault. A series needs a spine, and the congregation needs to hear it. The rule is to decide in advance what repeats and to keep the list short.
- The series sentence, said once each week, in the same words, so that by week six the congregation can say it with you. That is a feature.
- A closing charge or benediction that belongs to the series, if you use one.
- Nothing else. Not the opening, not the landing, not an illustration, not any week's one sentence. If something on the may-not list wants to repeat, it is telling you that week's sermon is not distinct enough yet.
Where a tool honestly fits
We make sermon prep software, and the planner above is a piece of paper that needs no software at all. Where PastorPrep helps in a series is narrow and specific: it keeps every sermon of the series in one place, so last week's is a click away when you are checking whether this week's sentence is a paraphrase, and when it drafts from your outline it learns your voice from your past sermons, not their content, so a draft for week five does not quietly reuse week two's illustration. The planning is still yours, and it still happens before week one.
Planning a series and want a second reading of the sentences?
Send us the passage for the next week of your series and, if you like, the sentences you have so far. Within 24 hours you will have an outline back, drafted by PastorPrep, in your own voice if you send two past sermons along with it. Vivian reads every request herself. Free, no account, no card, whether or not you ever pay us.
And for the whole series
PastorPrep keeps your main idea and outline word for word, drafts as much of the sermon as you ask it to, and checks every verse against your translation. $19 a month, one price. There is a 14-day free trial that starts when you write something, and no card to start. Start free, or see how it works.