Sermon Content Machine | Creating Content From Sunday to Sunday

In today's digital age, churches are finding new ways to connect with their people and expand their reach beyond traditional Sunday services. One way to achieve this is by repurposing the content from Sunday services into different forms of content. This not only helps to extend the reach of the message but also allows your people to engage with and share the message in more ways.

If your main focus is Instagram, you may wanna give this article a read: How to Leverage These 3 Powerful Features on Instagram.

In this blog, we’ll explore avenues you can take when creating content from your entire Sunday sermon. Whether you’re using the sermon in its entirety or just snippets, repurposing your Sunday service content can help you connect with people outside of your church as well as your congregation.

As you go down the list, you may notice that the content becomes increasingly smaller, ranging from using the entire sermon to smaller pieces of content for social media. This is what some people call the GaryVee Content Strategy. If you're not familiar with this, it is the process of taking your "pillar content" and creating "micro" content, then effectively distributing that across all of your communication channels.

The main idea we want to convey is that when you break down your content into smaller pieces, each one can enhance and support the one before it. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal is for all of them to lead back to your main "pillar" piece, which in this case is your Sunday sermon.

With that said, let’s jump in!

LIVE STREAM

When you live to stream your sermon, you are able to reach a wider audience beyond those physically present in your church. This can be especially beneficial for people who are unable to attend your church due to being on vacation, distance, disability, or any other reason.

If you’re new to live streaming, we talk more in-depth about how to get started in this article.

This may not seem like “creating content”, but this is a good place to start if you want to create other types of content. This leads us to our next point.

---

EDIT & ARCHIVE YOUR SERMON

Once your live stream has concluded, the next step is to edit it down so it can be added to your website, Youtube channel, and Facebook page.

Most churches don’t have proper licensing for archiving performed music. So to avoid copyright issues on Facebook and Youtube, consider editing your service down to just your recorded sermon. If your worship team performs songs that they don't own, the video may be flagged or taken down. You can use editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve to make the necessary edits.

It's also crucial to have a section on your website featuring past or “archived” sermons. This can help new visitors get to know your church better and may encourage them to attend in person.

---

CREATE A PODCAST

Once you've edited your sermon, it's easy to create a podcast by extracting the audio using Adobe Premiere Pro and uploading it to your preferred platform. However, if you're unfamiliar with this process, you can refer to this helpful article until we cover it in more detail.

---

WRITE A BLOG

There are many directions you could go for this one, but here’s an example of what it could look like to write a blog around your sermon:

• Recap the main points: Write a brief summary of the key takeaways from the sermon, highlighting the most important ideas, themes, and scripture that was referenced.
  

• Provide personal reflections: Share your own thoughts and experiences related to the sermon's topic, explain how it impacted you on a personal level, and encourage readers to reflect on the message too.
  

• Discuss practical applications: Offer practical suggestions for how the sermon's message can be applied in daily life.
  

• Encourage further study: Offer additional resources, such as recommended books or podcasts, to help readers delve deeper into the sermon's topic.
  

• Provide a prayer or reflection: Close the blog with prayer, reflection, or encouraging words to help readers apply the sermon's message to their own lives.

---

SEND A NEWSLETTER

Email is an effective means to share your Sunday sermon with a larger audience. If you already send a weekly email, adding your sermon is an easy way to expand your reach. However, if you don't have a newsletter yet, there are additional details you’ll need to figure out first. Here are 5 questions you could start with:

1. Who is your target audience for the newsletter? Is it just members of your church or are you trying to reach out to the broader community?
   

2. How often should we send out the newsletter, and what kind of timeline or schedule should we establish to ensure we stay consistent?
   

3. Will it be mainly updated on church events, sermons, and announcements, or will you also include educational articles, testimonials, and personal stories?
   

4. How can we use the newsletter to build a sense of community within the church, and encourage engagement and participation from members?

If you have a newsletter, promoting your Sunday sermon could involve linking to it through a feature that directs readers to your blog, YouTube upload, or recorded live stream on your website, which we discussed earlier.

---

CREATE A CAROUSEL POST

Although it's been said reels and videos are the most engaging type of content, carousel posts also perform extremely well when they are saveable, sendable, shareable, and relatable. We talk about that a little more in this blog.

A few ways you could create a carousel include:

• Ask follow-up or reflection questions in a series of 3 or 4 slides.
  

• Recap the main topics or key takeaways from the sermon and how your followers can apply it to the week and in their lives.
  

• Post a few key quotes and/or scripture references from the sermon.

---

CREATE A SINGLE QUOTE POST

This is probably the most simple and straightforward piece of content on this list. Take an impactful quote from the sermon and put it over a photo of your pastor or a graphic (you can find plenty of graphics on Igniter for that). You could even create a few of these to post throughout the week leading up to the next Sunday service.

---

CREATE SHORT-FORM VIDEO

Last, but certainly not least is short-form video. Otherwise known as Reels or TikToks or whatever they decide to call it next.

Staying up-to-date with the latest trends can be challenging, and it's not always necessary to be "trendy." However, we can leverage the power of social media to engage, inform, and encourage our congregation as well as other followers who may not be members.

Here’s a quick rundown on how you can do it:

• Have the recorded sermon file on hand.
  

• Find an impactful or important part of the sermon.
  

• Using video editing software or Instagrams In-App Editor, trim it down to 15-90 seconds.
  

• Add captions over the video (Instagram has this feature in-app).

We covered more about this in this article.

It’s clear that in our current digital age, there are countless opportunities to expand the reach of a church's message beyond the walls of the building. These strategies not only help to engage your audience in different ways but also allow those outside the church to connect with the message and potentially spark their interest in attending a service.

However, it's important to remember that at the heart of creating this content is a desire to connect with people, share a message of hope and invite them in. By repurposing Sunday service content, churches can reach more people than ever before and share their message in meaningful and impactful ways.

---

It's easy to get stuck on how to creatively theme your upcoming sermons. Don't worry, Igniter has all the sermon series content to help jump start your preaching calendar. Igniter's has a huge library of sermon series graphics, sermon social graphics, sermon illustration videos, sermon bumper videos or sermon title graphics with the goal of providing variety AND high quality.

Not sure you want to commit to a membership? Start with a 30-day free trial. We offer 3 types of membership PLUS a starter plan for smaller churches that qualify.

Sign-up and see what you could do as an Igniter user.