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Article: "Consider a Summer Sermon Series"
By Randy Engle , North Hills Christian Reformed Church, Troy, Michigan
Have you found success in sermon series? For many decades, preachers have cemented successive sermons together like a pathway that moves the heart and mind from one place to another. The discipline of working through a particular theme, or book of the Bible, is beneficial to both homiletician and congregant who walk the journey together.
Many preachers choose the school year as the natural time for sermon series. Worship attendance is high, and Sunday school curricula and adult education series can be planned to complement the sermons. Summer sermons, then, are usually individual ideas that have been percolating all year and are preached between vacation Sundays.
However, I find that a series planned for the summer has unique advantages. Even if folks are sporadic in summer attendance, summer sermon series help them feel less like they have missed something upon their return. While sermon themes cannot be coordinated with Sunday school curricula, children’s sermons can be used to complement the theme. Because it is the Trinity season of the church year, worship committees or visual ministry task forces are free to coordinate the visual environment to reinforce the sermon series.
Finally, there’s the advantage of the length of the summer season itself. At ten to twelve weeks, summer’s the perfect length! Envision one strophe of the Apostles’ Creed a week; or one petition of the Lord’s Prayer a week; or one Commandment a week. One year we planned "A Summer of Psalms" and simply looked at various well-known psalms for the twelve weeks of summer. Each week a different visual was placed on the Table: a shepherd’s crook for Psalm 23, an oil lantern for Psalm 119, a potted tree for Psalm 1, and so on.
From this preacher’s desk, the pre-planning of a summer sermon series gives the summer a more leisurely pace and feel. Gone are the "What now? " preoccupations that can fill days and nights as enriching times of worship unfold.
When calendaring a sermon series, don’t neglect the forgotten season of summer.