Prepare Better Sermons in Less Time

[Make sure and scroll to the bottom to get a 15% discount on Logos 6!]

By Ryan Nelson

Writing quality sermons takes time and energy pastors don’t always have. Discovering new insights can take hours of research, and assembling those insights can take hours. Logos Bible Software was built with pastors in mind—the more you use it, the more time it saves you.

Here are four ways Logos saves pastors sermon-prep time:

1. Turn personal study into powerful quotes
Visual Copy is a powerful new tool available in Logos 6, and pastors can’t stop talking about it. With a click, Visual Copy turns any quote you highlight into a compelling quote slide, so you can build your sermon while you study. These slides also work great for social-media or blog posts (I used Visual Copy to create a post with Charles Spurgeon quotes). You can send slides straight to PowerPoint, Proclaim, or your social networks.

Logos 6 also comes loaded with hundreds of slides that cover every book in the Bible and visually compelling art for the most popular preaching topics. When you pick a passage you want to use or a theme to preach on, the images you need are right there in the same place you study.

Logos helps you make a smooth transition from study to sermon. Start your presentation with Visual Copy without interrupting your research.

2. Find everything there is to know about . . . anything
When you need more information on a verse, topic, person, place, or anything else you encounter in your studies, look it up with the Everything Search. This tool hunts through your entire library to find everything you could possibly need to start your sermon: media, Atlas maps, dictionary links, Bible references, commentaries, and more. Everything Search assembles all your advanced search tools, so you can see all the information your library has to offer about your search.

Everything Search is like your personal research assistant; Logos’ Factbook is your microscope. When you need focused results, Factbook takes all that information and arranges it like an encyclopedia. If you search for a person like Charles Spurgeon, Factbook gives you a short biography, famous quotes, links to key words, and relevant events in the Timeline tool. The same search on any book on the Bible pulls up Bible-verse art, overviews, key events, outlines, authorship, historical data, themes, and more. Factbook helps you spend more time preparing your message and less time wondering where to begin.

Logos 6 makes serious study simple. Get in and learn what you need, so you can get out and share it.

3. Bring ancient context to the modern church
One of the hardest parts of bringing the Bible to the context of our congregation is understanding the context in which it was written. Without understanding ancient culture, we might apply or interpret Scripture incorrectly—and worse, share our misconceptions with our church. Word choice, imagery, and concepts can all have completely different meanings in the context of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. What may seem insignificant to the modern reader could have meant the world to an ancient writer, and vice versa.

Logos 6′s new Cultural Concepts tool sheds light on over 1,000 concepts like music, food, burial practices, traditions, and titles you find throughout the Bible. You can see what they refer to in the Bible, other verses where they appear, and how they were used in other ancient literature.

Logos lets you explore cultural concepts and ancient literature, so you can bring fresh insights to your modern church.

4. Fight writer’s block with tools that spark sermon ideas
Logos has a custom search tool designed with pastors in mind. Search over 200 of the most popular sermon topics, and the Sermon Starter Guide retrieves key passages, excerpts, thematic outlines, illustrations, quotes, sermons, journals, and more. Say you have a big sermon coming up on the Resurrection. The Sermon Starter Guide lets you indicate exactly what you mean by “resurrection”—Jesus, his resurrection, and ascension. From there, you can see how Timothy Keller and others have preached on the resurrection of Christ, browse illustrations, quotes, prayers, and passages, and get started with an outline. With Logos 6, your library is packed with more sermons and tools for pastors, so the Sermon Starter Guide is more valuable than ever.

Watch this video to learn more:

Start writing better sermons, faster
As one of our readers, right now you can get a special 15% discount on Logos 6. Use coupon code PASTORSHELPER6 at checkout. Go to: www.logos.com

Save hours on sermon prep, so you can pour that time back into your family, your ministry, and your life. Do yourself a favor and get Logos 6.