Never waste a good sermon, especially after you’ve spent so much time preparing it! Thom Rainer recently wrote that more time in sermon preparation usually means a more effectively evangelistic church. If you’re one of those who spends 15 hours or more on a message, it must stink to realize that all you can squeeze out of all that work is 38 minutes of preaching on the weekend. So why not stretch it further?

In the world of blogging and social media, you can do just that, and here are some suggestions for how:

1. Blog your points, one at a time. A full sermon transcript or manuscript is probably too long for a blog post, but one point with its explanation is just the right size. So if you’re presenting three or four major truths this Sunday, write three or four corresponding blog posts during the following week.

2. Post memorable quotes from the message. Every good message needs to have single sentences within it that really drive home the truth of Scripture. If those sentences can be written in 140 characters or less, send them out on Twitter, and you get even a little more room on Facebook.

3. Post the video on YouTube and Vimeo, either in chunks or as a whole. And there are advantages to five-minute clips and advantages to full-length sermons. Either way, spread them around.

4. Use the audio for a podcast. One of my new favorite tools is SoundCloud, which has some great features for audio-blogging and podcasting including a nice embeddable media player, and since it's HTML5-powered, people can listen on mobile phones.

5. Write a small group study guide based on the message. What do you do with all the material you chop off before the presentation? Turn it into a “digging deeper” study and distribute it to small group leaders.

6. Create eBooks from whole sermon series. This idea is gold! Create a nicely-designed pdf eBook for distribution through your website, Facebook, and even the Amazon Kindle store and other outlets. It’s bigger than the bite-sized blog but not quite the overwhelming size of a full book.

The gospel is the greatest content on the planet, and we pastors write and say a lot of words about it every week. It’s a shame for that knowledge to go to waste. Utilize modern technology and social distribution points to extend the message and fill every conversational space with the truth and glory of God!

How and where do you re-purpose your message content?