Sermon Builder is a sermon creation tool that lets you quickly create a sermon manuscript, a slide presentation, handouts, and discussion questions simultaneously. Focus on your sermon content and build out documents for your services at the same time.
Note: Available in packages Silver and above.
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Note: Sermon Builder works closely with Sermon Manager, though they are not the same. Sermon Manager organizes all your sermon documents while Sermon Builder creates specific sermons.
Start a Sermon
You can start a sermon document in two primary ways.
Start a sermon with the Documents menu
To create a blank sermon click Documents > New > Sermon.
Start a sermon with the Sermon Manager
Open the Sermon Manager tool from the Tools menu and click Add in the top right corner.
Note: To open a previously created sermon from the Documents menu, filter or search the Documents menu to locate your desired sermon. You can also access Sermon Builder via the Tools menu.
Add Sermon Info
The Sermon Info pane holds important details about your sermon. The more metadata you add, the easier it will be for you to find at a later date. If you publish your sermons using Logos Sermons, this metadata will help others discover your sermon and know what it’s about.
Note: If you don’t see the Sermon Info panel, click the info icon to the right of the Export button to toggle it on.
If you export your sermon to Logos Sermons, the sermon info you provide is indexed and searchable. Many of the input fields are preloaded with consistent naming conventions, like the topics and reference fields. This helps you stay consistent and avoid duplicate tags.
- Series: Provide a series title to add the sermon to a series. Matching existing series show below as you type.
- Number: Shows where this particular sermon appears in a series
- Topics: Begin typing to show predefined biblical topics and themes. Select one from the list to add it to your sermon details. You can add multiple topics.
- Passages: Add a biblical passage by typing and choosing the passage from the list below. You can add multiple passages.
- Tags: Provides the ability to add your own tags to your sermons
- Description: Provide a couple of sentences describing the sermon’s content.
- Target Duration: An indication of how long the sermon is intended to be
- Private Note: Unlike the other sermon metadata, your private notes will not publish to Logos Sermons, but are visible to you when viewing the sermon in Logos.
- Links: Links to external URLs you might want to reference
- Speaker: By default, your name shows for any sermons you create. To change the speaker, provide a new name in the input field.
- Occasion: Add a date, venue (like a specific church or conference), and time (e.g., 10:00am Service).
- Audience: Provide audience segments like General Adult, Kids, Youth Group, Conference, or Other.
- Liturgy: Where applicable, add a liturgical day, season, and year.
Note: To create a template for use in the Sermon Manager, select Template at the top of the Sermon Info pane. Learn more about the Sermon Manager.
Add Sermon content from Sermon Notebook
You can add notes connected to your sermon from the Sermon Notebook tab (icon) in the Info Pane.
- To create a note, click New note to open the notes tool and add a personal note to your sermon. A notebook with the same name as your sermon will be created automatically.
- To add note content directly to your sermon from a previously-created note, open a notebook to view its notes. The note must be located in a named notebook.
- Click the insert icon to insert content from your selected note into the sermon document. Click the edit icon to open the note for editing.
Note: Learn more about the Notes tool in Logos.
Add Popular Quotes
Use the Popular Quotes tool to find quotes related to your sermon or passage. Logos will pull together all the related quotes and you can bring the best one into your manuscript.
Click the quotes icon and enter your topic or passage.
Drag the quote you want into your manuscript. Sermon Builder will bring it in as a block quote and make a dynamic slide. See ‘Style and Edit Slides’ below for editing options.
Revert to Previous Version
Find a previously saved version of your sermon by clicking the version history icon . Select a version from the list to revert to that previously saved version.
Add Sermon Content
Ensure the Edit tab is selected to add your content. Start writing your sermon by creating sermon headings and text on the left. While building your manuscript, you can generate slides, a handout, and a question document simultaneously.
Add biblical passages to your sermon by typing out the reference and pressing the Enter key. Logos will add the passage in your preferred Bible translation and create a slide with the passage preloaded on it. You can also add the reference in-line without a slide by pressing the Tab key after your reference.
Note: You can toggle the visibility of the Scripture insertion helpers from the panel menu (click the panel menu icon and enable/disable Show Scripture insertion helpers). While creating lists, you may prefer to show only the reference of a passage. You can set whether or not to allow Scripture insertion in lists from the panel menu (click the panel menu icon
and check/uncheck Enable Scripture insertion in lists).
The Formatting Toolbar
The formatting toolbar offers a variety of options and works similarly to other word processing software.
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Text Styles: Choose a text style from the dropdown menu.
- Normal: Use this style for the text of your sermon. Normal text will not automatically appear in slides, handouts, or questions.
- Heading (1, 2, 3, 4, 5): Logos will generate slides from each of your headings, as well as include them in your handouts and question documents.
- Blockquote: Set block quotations apart from the rest of your manuscript text.
- Illustration: Set your illustration apart from the rest of your manuscript text.
- Prompt: Set prompts apart from the rest of your manuscript text. Prompts will not be included when you export the transcript of your sermon.
- Formatting Styles: Call special attention to any text in your sermon manuscript. Click the styling dropdown to add font, color, and background color styling to the selected text. Save any selection as a new style to use it in the future.
- Text Styling: Style any text with standard formatting options like bold, italics, or underline. You can also create bulleted or numbered lists or change the indentation of any selected text.
- Fill-in: Select any text and choose Fill-in from the formatting toolbar to generate a fill-in-the-blank style for the text in your printable handouts. Note: The text also needs to be marked with Include in Handout or Include in Questions.
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Include in Handout
: Include text in the handout document by highlighting it and clicking the Handout button. Text included in the Handout document is indicated by a blue background. Selecting this option does not change the appearance of the text when you export it. Deselecting this option will remove the text from your Handout.
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Include in Questions
: Include text in the Question document by highlighting it and clicking the Question button. Text included in the Question document is indicated by a green background. Selecting this option does not change the appearance of the text when you export it. Deselecting this option will remove the text from your Question document.
- Undo/Redo: Undo to remove the last content change or redo to add a removed content change back into your document.
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Add Slides from Selected Text
: Click to create a slide from any selected text in your sermon document.
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Add Slides from Selected References
: If you’ve added a reference within a paragraph, Logos can generate a Bible slide for that reference if you select the paragraph and click this button.
- Clear markup: Clear styling on any selected text with the clear markup button.
Note: Bible slides show your preferred Bible by default, though you can change the displayed version from the dropdown that appears when you click the current version.
The Document Toolbar
The document toolbar allows you to switch between the different views of your sermon.
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Outline: Click the outline menu icon
to show an outline of your main headings.
- Edit: Select the edit tab to add content to your sermon document.
- Text: Display a text-only view of your sermon.
- Slides: Show all of the slides in your sermon document.
- Handout: View your handout. If you have fill-in-the-blank words, you can show or hide answers in your handout. You can print this document from the Export menu as shown below.
- Question: View your question document. You can print this document from the Export menu as shown below.
Style and Edit Slides
To change the styling or the wording for any generated slide, right-click the slide and choose Edit.
Note: You can toggle the visibility of slides from the panel menu (click the panel menu icon and enable/disable Show slides).
To change the text displayed on the slide, make changes in the content panel on the left and view your changes live on the right.
Note: You can add animations and other presentation features after exporting your sermon to presentation software like Proclaim or Powerpoint.
To change the styling of your slide, click Find Media and filter and search to locate an appropriate background. Select it and choose Update Sermon.
Depending on the sermon block you select to edit, Logos media will prefilter the available slide types to match your content. Generally speaking, to enable automated slide creation, do not change this prefiltered slide type.
Did you know? You can apply your background style to all slides in your sermon by right-clicking the altered slide and choosing Apply Style to All Slides. You cannot currently apply a custom background to all slides, and some backgrounds do not allow this action.
For user-created media or to use a slide type that doesn’t work with your current sermon block type, you can manually create slides.
To add a new background image:
- Copy and paste the background image into your Sermon.
- Right click, Edit.
- Add your header as “body text,” and adjust font face, size, and color as desired.
- Click Update Media.
To reuse your custom image on another slide:
- On any existing slide, right click, Edit.
- Click Find Media.
- Change “in Logos Media” to “User Media.”
- Select your image.
- Add text and click Update Media as above.
Export your Sermon
Sermon Builder provides a variety of export options.
- Share: Make your sermon document public or share it with a group (you can enable group collaboration to allow others in your group to edit the document). Learn more about working with documents.
- Preach: Enter preaching mode to view a speaker-friendly version of your sermon document. Learn more about preaching mode.
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Export: View several options to export your sermon:
- Send to Proclaim exports your sermon slides to Proclaim. (Proclaim must be installed on your computer, requires a separate software license.)
- Post to Logos Sermons uploads your sermon text, handout, and question document to Logos Sermons.
- Export to PowerPoint sends your sermon slides to Microsoft PowerPoint.
- Print / Export opens a dialog allowing you to print your sermon text, copy it to your clipboard, or save it in a variety of file formats, including PDF, HTML, or Word.
- Print: You can print or save your sermon by clicking the print icon located in between the Export button and the Information Panel icon.
Note: When you click Print/Export from the panel menu, Logos open the Print / Export dialog.