How to Get the Most Out of Sermon Editor

sermon editor

Some pastors spend 30 hours or more preparing a single sermon. Even if you treasure every moment of those hours, there are parts of the process of writing a sermon that take longer than they need to—and more importantly, distract you from focusing on the parts that matter. Logos’ Sermon Editor feature helps you transition from studying to sermon writing, and from sermon writing to preaching.

As a pastor, you’re probably wary of shortcuts that cause you to spend less time in the Word, in prayer, or refining your message. But if you’re at all familiar with Logos, you know that’s not how our tools save you time. We help you get more out of the time you already spend and optimize your workflow. Without ever leaving Logos, you can start and finish your sermon slides—and send them to your team.

example sermon

Write your sermons in Logos

Sermon Editor streamlines your sermon-writing process by automatically creating slides while you write. You can choose from thousands of backgrounds (including Pro Media, if you have it), and Sermon Editor will automatically format your text to fit the slide, so you don’t have to mess with it.

While you write, Sermon Editor makes a new slide every time you create a new heading or add a Bible reference. As you flesh out your ideas and identify your main points, you can highlight text and tell Sermon Editor to put it on a slide. You can create bulleted or numbered lists, create fill-in-the-blank text, blockquotes, bold, italics, underlines, and even create speaking cues for yourself—for when you need to “Have congregation turn to Mark 4:5,” “Tell the family road trip story,” or “Ask for a show of hands.”

speaking cues

When you’ve finished writing your sermon and you have all the slides you want, you can send your slides to your team by exporting them to PowerPoint or sending them straight to Proclaim Church Presentation Software.

With PowerPoint, you get static images you can email to your team or hand over in a thumb drive. With Proclaim, however, your team can edit your slides to fit the rest of the presentation and add new effects—plus, you can add parts of your sermon to a free online church bulletin.

Transition from preparation to proclamation

When you combine Logos and Proclaim (which you can try for free), Sermon Editor becomes an even greater asset to your church staff. Logos and Proclaim were built to provide you with the clearest path from preparing sermons to proclaiming truth. That’s why when you send your slides to Proclaim, we let you select from the most recent presentations your team has been working on. You can add your slides to the exact presentation your team is building or create a new one—without ever leaving Logos.

sermon presentation

In Proclaim, your slides aren’t just static images. You or your team can continue editing them, so you can align your design efforts, emphasize text, or use our digital bulletins to leverage your church’s smartphones.

Create digital bulletins

Every time you create a presentation in Proclaim, Faithlife automatically generates a digital bulletin with all your slides, so your congregation can follow along on their mobile devices. When you send your sermon slides to Proclaim, it also updates the digital bulletin. These bulletins can also automatically collect your attendance information, provide surveys, allow online giving, and more. You can add or remove sections from this bulletin at any time, but there’s also more ways you can utilize these connections within Sermon Editor.

While you write your sermon, you can highlight text and add the “handout” tag to automatically add that text to your digital bulletin. Maybe there’s a quote you want people to remember, passages you want people to read, or extra information you want to make available to your congregation without disrupting your presentation on the screen. When you send fill-in-the-blanks to your bulletins, your congregation can tap them to reveal the hidden words.

You can also use the “questions” tag to build a list of questions for your congregation to use in small groups or their personal reflections—making your bulletin a tool people want to return to after the service.

If your church isn’t ready to fully transition to digital, you can also print these bulletins to hand them out.

sermon handout

Optimize your workflow

Sermon Editor comes with Logos Bronze and above. If you haven’t seen it in action yet, check out our tutorial videos to get familiar with this game-changing feature.

You can try Proclaim Church Presentation Software free. Your whole team can join in with unlimited installs (Mac and PC) and unlimited accounts on a single subscription.

Try Proclaim for free.

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Written by
Ryan Nelson

Ryan Nelson is a writer for OverviewBible, where he uses Logos to explore the characters, groups, places, and books of the Bible. He has served in a variety of volunteer ministry positions, primarily through Young Life.

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Written by Ryan Nelson
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