For the sixth year in a row, October is when we release our brand-new yearly sermon calendars. For the last ten months, our team has been thinking, dreaming, praying, writing, and designing. Now, after nearly a year, we’re ready to unveil our work to the world.
Our calendars are the most requested item we have up on the site. They are also the products most people ask about. Here’s a short blog explaining a little bit about the calendars, and what they all include.
What are your different types of calendars?
This month, we’re releasing four calendars:
The Storyteller Calendar
The Storyteller Calendar is a topical calendar for lead pastors. Though all of our messages focus on individual passages, this calendar is divided mostly by topic, versus book-by-book. Here, we have series like: “Neighborhood Watch” and “At the Table.” This calendar is our most downloaded product on the site.
The Teacher Calendar
The Teacher is our expository calendar. It’s primarily divided into biblical books and large passages of scripture. This is a great resource for pastors who like to dig into books and long passages of scripture. A couple of the series include: “Fresh Faith: The Book of Malachi” and “The Sermon on the Mount.”
The Youth Leader
The Youth Leader is a calendar designed specifically for student ministers. Though there are a few book-based series, we’ve mostly organized it topically. I love the series we’ve built this year. Two of them are: “The Summer of the Other” and “AKA: Name Changes in the Bible.”
The Kid’s Leader
Like the youth pastor, the Kid’s Leader is mostly topical. It’s also geared specifically for children’s groups and follows the Storyteller Calendar. The artwork is fun, lively, and includes series like “The Original” and “Tech-Wise.”
Did you just throw together a bunch of “cool” series to make these calendars?
While I think our series are well-organized, applicable, and the artwork looks great, we didn’t just think of “cool” series names and then come up with content to fit into those names. Our team thought and prayed about the calendar for a good while before compiling it together. We’ve also spent a considerable amount of time discussing what topics should be included, and where they should be placed.
We’ve done our best to organize each series so that they get the most amount of impact on the calendar. For instance, we tried to focus on discipleship and sanctification during the summer, and evangelism in the fall (historically, this is when most people are looking to get plugged into a new church). In the end, our team took great care to produce the highest quality, most effective calendar possible.
What’s included in each calendar?
Here’s what the calendar includes: we divided the entire year into sermon series—with a few stand-alone messages sliced in. Each week within those series comes with:
- A Biblical Text
- The “Big Idea” of that Text
- Application Point
- A Topic List
- A “Sermon Ideas and Talking Point” Section
- Small Group Questions
Our calendars give you a bird’s eye view of each series. You can download the full bundles on the site. See the picture below for an example of what one of our calendar pages looks like.
Also, all of the series bundles in the calendars are available for download on MinistryPass.com. Not only do those bundles come with a copy of everything you see in the calendars, but we’ve also included all of the graphics you’ll need to promote your series. We’re talking screen graphics, social media images, and print material. Plus, we’ve included a video bumper and a 5-minute countdown video for each series, too.
What’s in the “Sermon Ideas and Talking Point” section?
Most people are curious to know what this section of the calendars include.
This area is filled with observations about the text, relevant questions, creative ideas, and illustrations. You can see a little more about what that involves by looking at the calendar page excerpt above.
Why don’t you have full sermons?
We get asked this question from time to time. While sermon manuscripts can be both useful and a powerful training tool, our sermon series guides are different. Rather than tell you what to say, our aim is for this material to spark your imagination, assist you in planning your sermon, and offer a boost to your study time.
It’s not possible for us to know what you need to say, specifically, to your group, but we can help you understand what the Bible is, as a whole, saying to the Church. From there, you have the tools you need to speak directly to the hearts of your people.
Can I change series and/or weeks in the calendars?
Yes! This guide isn’t set in stone. While we hope you use our material, the pieces in this calendar are designed to be moved, tweaked, and altered. As you study the suggested passages, and pray through your message, this guide will hopefully be a launching pad, rather than a landing net. I recently talked to one pastor who uses part of the calendar during the year, and then pulls other resources from our site to fill in the rest of the months. Another minister told me he follows the calendar verbatim. Others mix and match between the calendars. There’s room for all of these approaches!
Can I buy a calendar individually?
As mentioned above that it’s taken our team over ten months to create these calendars. We’ve not only put a ton of effort into them, but a great deal of money, too.
Saying that, the answer is yes and no. The cost of an annual Ministry Pass membership saves you $109 over the monthly membership. We believe that our calendars and corresponding bundles are each worth this price individually. So, we are offering each calendar (and their media bundles) at that same price.
But, if you purchase a membership to Ministry Pass, not only do you get access to all of the calendars at that low price, you also get access to over 800+ products on the site.
That’s why we’re encouraging pastors to go ahead and save money by getting a annual membership instead. Once again, if you purchase a Church Pass membership, you have access to all four calendars. We do our best to keep our prices low, but we genuinely believe the resources we offer are more than worth the cost of a yearly membership.
For more information about our
new 2020 calendars, shoot us an email ([email protected])
or call us at 1-800-379-8033.
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