I frequently hear pastors say that while their congregations love sermon series, they themselves love the rich resources–preaching helps, liturgy, podcasts, commentaries, and more–curated around the Revised Common Lectionary. The great news for those pastors is that you don’t have to choose between the lectionary and sermon series. With a little pastoral attention and creativity, you can make sermon series out of the lectionary readings!
The same tools you use for weekly lectionary preaching will help you as you create your sermon series–only instead of applying them weekly, apply them in bulk! Many preachers who were taught to preach lectionary listen to scripture as a solo act, asking what an individual text says on an individual week. Creating a lectionary sermon series means bringing those various solo voices together as a choir. Where is there unison? Harmony? Dissonance? Let the scriptures speak to you together.
(Hot tip: if you’re someone who preaches from multiple scriptures from the lectionary each week, you’re already doing this! Just bring scriptures from consecutive weeks into that same kind of conversation.)
Above all, remember that the point of a sermon series is to help the message of scripture stick in the minds and hearts of congregants. It doesn’t have to the most fascinating, flashy, or original series ever–it just has to help folks get a handle on the good news!
Eight-ish Steps to Create Your Own Sermon Series from the Revised Common Lectionary
1. Optional, but not as silly as it sounds: put yourself in the mood of the season. Are you planning Advent? Hum some “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and light a few candles. Eastertide? Pop on your most joyous playlist and buy yourself some fresh flowers. No matter what time of year you’re doing your planning in, try to put yourself in the mood your listeners will be in when you get around to preaching it. What will people experience in the worship space and in the secular world as they listen to this sermon series?
2. Free-read the RCL scriptures for the season. The goal here is not to strip-mine the material for preachable nuggets, but to simply enjoy the scriptures as their weird, wild, wonderful selves.
3. Read the RCL scriptures a second time. As you read, look for repeated images, words, emotions, or questions. If you find more than one common thread, discern which one God is most throwing in your face to preach (that’s how God works for you, too, right?). Save the others for later–these scriptures will reappear in three years, after all. That most compelling repeated element becomes your theme. It really is that simple!
This is easiest for the high liturgical seasons (Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide) when the lectionary itself is built around the season’s themes. I usually read all four lectionary readings during these seasons, pulling texts for preaching from the whole breadth of scripture.
During Ordinary Time, the lectionary offers semi-continuous readings through the Old Testament, the Epistles, and the Gospels, with additional prophets and psalms to support the gospel track. Your best bet during this season is to follow one of those continuous tracks. Within Ordinary Time, I try to keep series to eight weeks at a maximum, and that’s pushing it.
3. Each week, how does that specific text illuminate that theme? Those are your subthemes.
You may get a week in the RCL that just… doesn’t fit. Here’s a great place to know your own homiletic malleability—or, in other words, how far you can stretch while keeping your integrity as a preacher. On these weeks, you have three choices:
- You can acknowledge that it doesn’t really work and use it anyway. Having a week “off theme” never killed anybody (as far as I know).
- You can choose an alternate text for that day that better fits the theme. Trust your knowledge of the scriptures!
- You can make the stretch verrrry carefully so you don’t pull a hermeneutical muscle. Acknowledge that while the passage twists, subverts, or doesn’t at first seem to speak to the theme, it can still illuminate something about it.
4. Sketch out your sermon series with its overarching theme and weekly subthemes. Check it to make sure there’s both enough cohesion and variety to sustain listener’s interest. If you realize you’re repeating the exact same idea multiple times, review the details of scripture to see what nuance you can add.
5. Catchy titles and graphics are fun–but clarity is key! Helping your congregants understand the main idea of the series is more important than being clever or cutesy.
6. Visuals in worship are really helpful—but you don’t have to be an artist! Something as simple as a single object in the chancel can really help people “see” what you “say.”
7. Lift up that themed image in music and liturgy (it takes a lot for repetitions to get old). You can even repeat the exact same piece of liturgy (a call to worship, prayer of illumination, sung response, etc.) every single week. It’s not laziness, it’s a series element!
8. Voila! You have a sermon series. Congratulations!
Mindsets for Building Meaningful Series
Think like a teacher. Think of a series like a unit in a class. What major learning do you want your folks to keep? What has to be taught first? Where are the gaps in education that need to be filled in?
Think like an artist. The same subject can be fascinating from several perspectives, in different seasons, different lights. When much is the same, the little differences carry more weight.
Think like a congregant. Preachers sit with the text for hours and hours every week. Congregants get it for about 15 minutes. Don’t try to pack a week’s worth of thinking into a sermon. Pack 15 minutes worth of hearing into a sermon. In 15 minutes, what would you need to hear? What would you need to learn?
Deep Well Worship 