2024 was such a fun year for our student ministry. Besides camp dares and high-ropes courses, we had several fun, formative sermon series for our group. From a study on the character of God in Exodus to building courage and confidence in Revelation, God used these series to move our students closer to Jesus. And I had so much fun preaching them!

Below are the series with a brief description, message titles, and texts. Please take a look and consider using them in your student ministry or bible study. I am also happy to pass on whatever notes or manuscripts along or recommend resources that I used along the way. Email me at jameskeganshoemaker@gmail.com. Have a blessed 2025!

Walk Worthy (Ephesians 4-6): 9 Weeks

We ended 2023 teaching Ephesians 1-3 in a series called “Everything in Christ.” The focus was on our identity in Christ, so to start 2024, we continued Ephesians by focusing on our activity for Christ. Each message focused specifically on our “walk”, a new lifestyle that we live because of what God has done for us in Christ.

Week	Title	Text
Week 1	A Worthy Walk	Ephesians 4:1-16
Week 2	A New Walk	Ephesians 4:17-28
Week 3	A Kind Walk	Ephesians 4:29-32
Week 4	A Loving Walk	Ephesians 5:1-14
Week 5	A Wise Walk	Ephesians 5:15-21
Week 6	A Family Walk Pt. 1	Ephesians 5:22-33
Week 7	A Family Walk Pt. 2	Ephesians 6:1-9
Week 8	A Victorious Walk Pt. 1	Ephesians 6:10-13
Week 9	A Victorious Walk Pt. 2	Ephesians 6:14-24

Heartbeat– 4 Weeks

This series started with the simple question: If you could listen to the heart of God, what would you hear? From these texts, we learned that God wants us to have, know, show, and share salvation. We began the series by writing the names of our friends who don’t know Jesus on a door and prayed each week that God would open a door of opportunity for us to share the gospel!

Week	Title	Text
Week 1	A Heart for Salvation	1 Timothy 2:1-8
Week 2	A Heart for Assurance	1 John 5:13
Week 3	A Heart for Showing	Philippians 2:12-18
Week 4	A Heart for Sharing	2 Corinthians 5:11-21

Street Smarts (Proverbs)– 4 Weeks

The book of Proverbs speaks so powerfully to so many practical areas of life in bite-sized pieces. We focused on collecting profound, simple proverbs on important topics to find practical wisdom for everyday life.

Week	Title	Text
Week 1	The Way of Wisdom	Proverbs 3:5-9
Week 2	How to Make Wise Friends	Various Proverbs
Week 3	How to Avoid Red Flags	Various Proverbs
Week 4	How to Make Wise Decisions	Various Proverbs

The End: The Book of Revelation – 9 weeks

Revelation is… intimidating. Many hesitate to preach it for a number of reasons, but I chose to teach on it for three quick reasons. First, our students are so interested in it and they were already asking questions. Second, Revelation is not written to provoke anxiety, but actually to provoke faith, courage, and peace, things our students desperately needed. Third, reading the book of Revelation provides an explicit blessing for those who hear: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this propheyc, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near” (Revelation 1:3).

Week	Title	Text
Week 1	The Beginning of the End	Revelation 1:1-8
Week 2	The Churches at the End	Revelation 1:9 – 3:22
Week 3	The Throne at the End	Revelation 4-5
Week 4	The Crowd at the End	Revelation 7
Week 5	The Judgments at the End	Revelation 6, 8-9, 15
Week 6	The Villains at the End	Revelation 13, 17-18
Week 7	The Marriage Supper at the End	Revelation 19
Week 8	The Victory at the End	Revelation 20
Week 9	The End of Ends	Revelation 21-22

Lore: The Story of God in Exodus – 15 weeks

Next to Revelation, Exodus was my favorite. We started this Fall with the premise that Exodus is a story of God, who He is, and what He does for His people. We focused less on finding ourselves in Exodus and more on learning about the God of the Exodus and how He is the same God today.

One unique way we emphasized this is each week we learned something that God is. “God is Rescuer” or “God is Able.” Then before each message, we recited all of the “God is…” statements from the earlier weeks to remind ourselves of the amazing truth that God is, not just was, all of these things for us.

This was also our first series that we recorded and shared our messages. You can look at them here: Lore Series

Week	Title (Story)	Text
Week 1	A Bigger Story	Exodus 1:1-7
Week 2	God is Rescuer (Midwives and Moses)	Exodus 1:8-22; 2:1-10, 23-25
Week 3	God is the Great I Am (The Burning Bush)	Exodus 3:1-22
Week 4	God is Able (Moses’ Objections)	Exodus 4:1-17
Week 5	God is Powerful (The Ten Plagues)	Exodus 5-10
Week 6	God is Redeemer (Passover and Exodus)	Exodus 11-12
Week 7	God is Victorious (The Red Sea)	Exodus 14
Week 8	God is Provider (Provision in the Wilderness)	Exodus 15:22-27; 16; 17:1-7
Week 9	God is Holy (Mt. Sinai)	Exodus 19
Week 10	God is Lawgiver pt. 1 (The Ten Commandments)	Exodus 20:1-11
Week 11	God is Lawgiver pt. 2 (The Ten Commandments)	Exodus 20:12-21
Week 12	God is Rest (The Sabbath)	Exodus 31:12-19
Week 13	The Path of Idols (The Golden Calf)	Exodus 32
Week 14	I Want God (The Covenant Restored)	Exodus 33-34
Week 15	God is With Us (The Tabernacle)	Exodus 40; John 1:1-14

I hope you find these ideas helpful to use for your own ministry or inspire you to tackle some new books yourself. If you’re interested in seeing my lists of previous years as well, I’d be happy to send them to you!