Planning Your Next Sermon Series? Start Here.

Tell me everything you know about the book of Romans. Ready, set, go!

Admit it: unless you’re Doug Moo, it’s pretty tough to summarize the background details of even this well-read and beloved epistle. But if you’ve ever preached through the book of Romans, you probably did just that. You pulled together commentaries, encyclopedias, and other resources, scoured them for relevant content, then repackaged your study into a series introduction that your congregation could quickly grasp.

If you preach expositionally through books of the Bible, beginning a new series can be daunting. There’s loads of content to sort through, and it’s a challenge to sift the helpful stuff from the same bland, cursory information repeated in every commentary introduction. Today, I’ll show you how Logos can help with this essential step in your sermon prep.

The perfect place to start

If you’re planning your next sermon series, your first stop should be Logos’ Bible Book Guides. This tool draws together solid background information on specific biblical books from across your Logos library. It takes some of the pressure off the front end of your sermon prep so you can focus on synthesizing the content for your congregation.

The Bible Book Guides are great for planning sermon series, writing exegetical papers, crafting course curricula, preparing lessons, and personal Bible study too—pretty much any time you need to get a handle on the broad themes and historical background of a biblical book, you should start with a Bible Book Guide. I break it down for you in this video.

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Give your Bible Book Guides an instant boost

Logos draws together material from across your library on the author, date, purpose, themes, message, and more for every book of the Bible. Here are some resources that will fill your Bible Book Guides with savvy background information.

• Anchor Yale Bible Commentary: This series is lauded for the robust historical and cultural background it provides. It’s so full of fascinating and relevant insights, that it’s kind of exhausting to sort through. Bible Book Guides organizes the Anchor Yale Bible’s background content into relevant categories that make embarking on a full-scale book study a little easier.
• International Critical Commentary Series (ICCS): This 61-volume beast is a long-time favorite of exegetes and preachers. It’s a scholarly series full of content that Logos throws into Bible Book Guides for easy access. To see all the ways you can use ICCS in Logos, check out this video.

• Factbook Collection: One of our experts curated this collection to power the Factbook, but it’s perfect for Bible Book Guides, too. It includes scores of encyclopedias, handbooks, and commentaries that have been specially tagged to fill your Bible Book Guides with the information you need at the beginning of your book study.

Prep your next sermon series now!

It’s never too early to plan your next sermon series, and Bible Book Guides are a great way to get started. You can use them in Logos . Get the package that’s right for you.