How to Use the Sermon Starter Guide This Christmas

Whether you’re a preacher or not, you can benefit from the Sermon Starter Guide. For example, imagine during this Christmas season you’ve been asked to give a devotional about the birth of Jesus. You’re just not sure, however, where to start in Logos.

Give this a try:

• Choose the Guides menu (A)
• Expand the Guides section (B)
• Select the Sermon Starter Guide (C)

• Type Jesus in the box (D)
• Notice in the list, all of the Preaching Themes containing the word Jesus (E)
• Select Jesus: Birth (F)

• Expand the Thematic Outlines section (G)
• Notice the names of outlines about your subject (H)

Before I finish the instructions allow me to explain the Thematic Outlines section. In all likelihood you own the resource Dictionary of Bible Themes, which is described as follows in its Introduction:

Over 2,000 themes detailed in this work cover doctrinal, ethical, historical and cultural subjects. In addition to dealing with the great themes of the Christian message of salvation, the themes thus also deal with practical issues of Christian living. This approach allows a unifying of Christian wisdom, both theological and practical, for the edification of God’s people.

The Thematic Outlines section automatically searches this one resource for all of its outlines about your Preaching Theme! Pretty cool, eh?

• Expand the Birth of Jesus outline (I)
• Notice the detailed outline taken from Dictionary of Bible Themes (J)

Now let’s say you like this outline and want to place it in a Sermon document so you can customize it for your devotional needs:

• Click the Copy to drop-down list (K)
• Select Sermon from the list (L)

• Rest the cursor on the title of the outline, Birth of Jesus Christ (M)
• Click Copy to the far right (N)

• Notice Logos creates a new Sermon document containing the outline (O)
• Edit the Sermon document as you desire

I really encourage you to explore the Dictionary of Bible Themes. This is one valuable resource in your library!

For more detailed instruction about Logos 8 features please check out mpseminars.com.

For live hands on training make sure to register for Camp Logos.

And don’t forget to follow Faithlife.com/mpseminars and you’ll automatically receive a FREE digital download of Dr. Grant Osborne’s commentary Ephesians Verse by Verse.

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Morris Proctor is a certified trainer for Logos Bible Software. Morris, who has trained thousands of Logos users at his two-day Camp Logos seminars, provides many training materials.