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110. Planning Seasonal Content

Moments like Easter, Christmas, or New Year Bible reading are great seasons for you to plan a series that your whole church can rally around together. These times have natural momentum and can be jumping off points for deeper engagement during the rest of the year.

How Churches Use This

To start, identify two or three major seasons for your church, like New Years, Easter, or back to school. Pick a Featured Plan for each season and publish a Post every week pointing back to the season. Create a full series calendar to help you plan a pre-launch Post, when the Plan goes live, weekly Posts, a kickoff Event, and a follow-up Post after the series ends.

Once you’re familiar with the seasons you’d most like to plan a full series for your church, include those in your content calendar for the full year. Look back at engagement data for each series to see what worked and how you’d like to adjust for the next series.

Here are some specific use cases:

Easter campaign. Six weeks before Easter, your team selects an Easter Plan. Two weeks before, a teaser Post goes out about your series. Your Featured Plan launches Monday of Holy Week. Daily Posts connect to each day’s reading. Events are ready for your Good Friday and Easter Sunday services. Follow-up Posts carry the momentum from Easter into your next series.
New Year Bible reading challenge. On January 1st, you feature a Plan for reading the entire Bible in one year. Small groups start it as a Plan with Friends. Monthly Posts celebrate milestones (“You’ve made it through Genesis”, etc). By December, you can see data showing how many people stuck with it and can celebrate with your church.
21-Days of Prayer. Your church does an annual prayer and fasting initiative in February. You feature a corresponding Plan, create Events for each in-person prayer gathering, and publish daily Posts with a prayer prompt.

Milestone Church in Keller, TX, found that launching a series gave them a tangible way for their congregation to engage with Scripture. “We’re still very new to YouVersion, but launching a New Year devotional alongside our email strategy was a great first step. It gave us something tangible to promote and helped us see how our congregation engages with digital content.”

Operational Guidance

Who owns this? The person who plans your sermon calendar or ministry seasons in partnership with your communications team.
Frequency: Plan a campaign quarterly and execute three to five per year.
Preparation needed: Sermon calendar, Plan selection (two to four weeks prior), content calendar for Posts, Event creation, and coordination with print/email/social media.

Best Practices

Start with the calendar. Map your church’s major seasons and sermon series for the year. Identify which ones get a full YouVersion campaign.
Debrief every series. Document what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d change. This compounds overtime into a resource on how to serve your church best.
Coordinate all channels. Communication in print, social media, email, Sunday morning, and the Bible App should all support your series.

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