Harvest Christian Fellowship

Greg Laurie Sermon Notes: Where to Find Them (+ How to Make Your Own)

Greg Laurie is the senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, a church he began leading as a young man in the early 1970s out of the Jesus Movement and the Calvary Chapel tradition. He is also the founder of the Harvest Crusades, large-scale evangelistic events that have run since 1990, and he teaches nationally through the Harvest radio and online ministry.

His preaching sits in an unusual place, which is exactly what makes note-taking on it interesting. Most weeks he teaches through a passage in the Calvary Chapel verse-by-verse manner, so there is real Bible content to record. But nearly every message also bends toward an evangelistic close, an explicit invitation to trust Christ. A Laurie sermon is therefore two things at once: a Bible study and an appeal.

If you search for Greg Laurie sermon notes, you are usually trying to hold onto the teaching half without losing the point the teaching was aimed at. This guide covers where the official material lives, then a method built for exactly that shape.

Where to find official Greg Laurie sermon notes

Laurie's teaching is published by his church and his broadcast ministry. Start with the official channels rather than third-party uploads, which are often clipped:

Harvest Christian Fellowship

The Riverside church streams its services and archives the weekly teaching, so the current series is available Sunday by Sunday. This is the source for the full-length message as preached.

Harvest Ministries online and the broadcast

Laurie's messages are carried on radio and released online and as podcast episodes. Podcast audio is trimmed to the teaching itself, which makes it the most convenient source if you plan to transcribe a message. Check the ministry site for any study guides that accompany a current series.

Harvest Crusade messages

Crusade and outreach messages are published separately from the Sunday teaching and are shorter and more directly evangelistic. Worth studying on their own terms if you want to see the appeal structure in its purest form.

His books and devotionals

Laurie has written widely for general readers, and the daily devotional material adapts his teaching into short form. For a theme he has preached repeatedly, the printed version is the most settled statement of it.

A note on copyright: Greg Laurie's sermons and any official notes remain the intellectual property of Harvest Ministries. Everything below is about making notes for your own study — not about republishing the ministry's content.

How to create your own sermon notes from any Greg Laurie sermon

For any single message you want in writing, the workflow takes about fifteen minutes and gives you a permanent record of both halves of the sermon:

1

Get the audio

Save the podcast episode or the audio from the archived service. Note the passage in the filename. If you are studying a crusade message instead, prefer the full recording so the invitation is included.

2

Transcribe it

Upload the audio for a complete transcript in minutes, and your first full sermon is free. A 40 minute message becomes searchable text you can quote from accurately instead of half remembering.

Transcribe the sermon
3

Generate the outline

Paste the transcript into the free sermon outline generator. It recovers the teaching structure: the passage, the observations, the illustrations and the application, as an editable skeleton.

Generate sermon notes free
4

Mark where the sermon turns

Find the sentence where the message stops explaining the passage and starts addressing the hearer directly. In a Laurie sermon that turn is the hinge, and marking it is what makes your notes useful later.

5

Finish the bridge

Complete the four rows below. The outline gives you what was taught. The bridge rows give you what it was taught for.

Start from a blank template
Note-taking template

The Bridge Method

Text, Culture, Cross, Call

Laurie moves from a biblical text, through a contemporary reference point, to the cross, and then to a direct request. Four bands on one page follow that path and keep the teaching attached to its purpose:

Text

The passage and the two or three observations he drew from it. Reference first, observation in a short sentence. This is the study half of the sermon.

Culture

The current event, film, news item or personal story he used to make the passage land. Note the connection point he chose, not the whole anecdote.

Cross

How the message arrived at the death and resurrection of Jesus. Write the actual route he took, because he takes a different one from different texts.

Call

The specific request at the end, in his words. Then add your own line: what this asks of you, given that you are already a believer or are still deciding.

Tip: If your Call row is empty, you have notes on a Bible study rather than notes on this sermon. Go back to the last five minutes of the transcript and fill it in.

Study tips for Greg Laurie's preaching

Keep the series pages together

When he teaches through a book, title each page by passage rather than by date. At the end of the series you hold a running commentary on the whole book instead of a pile of Sundays.

Collect the invitations separately

Keep one page where you copy just the closing appeal from each message. Read down that page after a few months and the pattern of how he removes obstacles becomes visible in a way no single sermon shows.

Note the cultural reference and its expiry date

The contemporary hooks age fastest. When you reread old notes, the observation from the text still works and the film reference may not. That contrast is a useful lesson for anyone who teaches.

Frequently asked questions

How do you take sermon notes?+
Write less than you think you should. For a Laurie message, four rows are enough: the passage and its observations, the contemporary illustration, the route to the cross, and the closing call. Capture references rather than full verses while listening, then fill the page out properly within a day using the transcript.
What is the best sermon note format?+
The one that matches how the preacher builds a message. Because Laurie teaches a passage and then makes an appeal, a format with a dedicated row for the appeal works better than a plain three point outline, which tends to record the study and drop the invitation entirely.
Should I write during the sermon?+
Write sparingly. Scripture references, one line per point, and any sentence you want back word for word. Trying to transcribe by hand means you stop listening, and it matters here because the closing appeal is the part you are most likely to miss while still writing about verse four.
Do I need a sermon notes template?+
Not strictly, but a template removes the decision of what to write and makes your notes comparable week to week across a series. Our free template gives you the blank structure, and the Bridge rows above tell you what to put in it for this preacher.
Does Harvest publish official Greg Laurie sermon notes?+
Harvest publishes the messages themselves in video, audio and podcast form, and offers devotional and study material through the ministry. Whether a specific series has a companion guide varies, so check the Harvest site. For a written outline of one particular message, transcribing it and generating your own outline is the dependable route.
What is the difference between a Harvest Crusade message and a Sunday sermon?+
Crusade and outreach messages are shorter, aimed at people who may be hearing a sermon for the first time, and built almost entirely around the appeal. The Sunday teaching usually works through a passage in sequence. If you are studying his method, read one of each side by side.
Can I share my Greg Laurie sermon notes with my small group?+
Your own summary notes, in your words, with the passage and your discussion questions, are fine to share. Redistributing the recording or a full transcript is not, since the message remains the ministry's copyrighted work. Link people to the official source for the sermon itself.

Transcribe any sermon free

Teaching and invitation in one message. Transcribe it once and keep both halves in writing. Your first full sermon is free — no credit card to start, then $19/month for unlimited sermons.

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Then turn the transcript into notes with the free sermon outline generator.

Want the bigger picture on Greg Laurie's ministry and most notable messages? See our Greg Laurie sermon archive guide in the Famous Sermons library.

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