What 7,386 U.S. Churches Preached On This Fall
We counted the topics and Bible books in 10,021 public sermons from 7,386 U.S. churches, dated September 1, 2026 to November 4, 2026. Discipleship was the most common main theme, the New Testament was cited far more than the Old, and Romans, Matthew and John led the books. This is a large sample of churches that put sermons online. It is not a random sample of America's churches, and the method below says exactly what it can and cannot show.
Method, and what this is not
- The sample. Public English-language sermons that churches have posted online and SermonWave has processed, dated September 1, 2026 to November 4, 2026: 10,021 sermons from 7,386 churches in 38 U.S. states. 5,895 of the churches contribute a single sermon, and no church supplies more than 0.1% of the total.
- It is a convenience sample. It covers the churches we found with sermons online, and it is weighted toward where our directory has the most coverage: TX is 16.3% of sermons, and Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas together supply 30% (the states table below shows the rest). It is not a random sample of U.S. congregations, so the shares describe this sample, not "American churches." Churches that do not post sermons are absent.
- Topics and books are tagged by AI. A language model read each sermon's transcript and assigned about six topic tags from a list of 35 (99.5% of the tags are on that list), one primary topic, and the Bible books cited. Nobody hand-checked every tag. "Cited" means the tags include the book, not that it was the sermon's text. The AI's tag vocabulary is broad: general labels such as discipleship, faith and grace are applied often, so the ranking shows how the tagger describes sermons as well as what pastors said.
- One tag vocabulary. Part of the sermons in these dates were first tagged by an earlier version of our pipeline, whose tags used a different vocabulary ("faith" was on 3% of them against 55% of the rest), and mixing the two would show differences between taggers as if they were differences between churches. On November 4, 2026 we re-ran the topic tags of 2,192 of those sermons on the current prompt and tag list, changing only the topic tags (the summaries, titles and transcripts were not touched), so all 10,021 sermons here carry one vocabulary. 131 sermons from the same dates are still left out: 38 from churches that use SermonWave themselves (their sermons stay on our own AI models and were not re-tagged), 78 that have no topic tags at all, and 15 whose re-tag did not return a usable answer. We also left out 1,918 older public sermons (before September 1, 2026) because there are too few per month to compare.
- Small groups are not published. Any topic, book, state or Sunday with fewer than 30 sermons is left out, and a state also needs at least 10 churches. No church or pastor is named or ranked anywhere on this page.
- Reproducible. Every figure is computed by one script from the database, and the CSV and JSON are the same numbers (see Download). Last computed November 4, 2026.
The most common main themes
The AI picks one primary topic per sermon. Discipleship was it for 7.9% of sermons (794), ahead of faith (6.1%) and salvation (4.3%). The rest of the sermons are spread over 4,196 differently worded primary topics, which is why even the leader holds under a tenth of the total. Each topic links to its sermons.
| Main theme | Sermons | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Discipleship | 794 | 7.9% |
| Faith | 611 | 6.1% |
| Salvation | 427 | 4.3% |
| Obedience | 395 | 3.9% |
| Identity in Christ | 349 | 3.5% |
| Evangelism | 282 | 2.8% |
| Worship | 251 | 2.5% |
| Prayer | 214 | 2.1% |
| End times | 199 | 2% |
| Community | 183 | 1.8% |
| Grace | 183 | 1.8% |
| Love | 181 | 1.8% |
| Spiritual warfare | 156 | 1.6% |
| Forgiveness | 145 | 1.4% |
| Leadership | 140 | 1.4% |
Share of 10,008 sermons with a primary topic. Counts of fewer than 30 are not shown.
Hope, forgiveness and anxiety
Counting every topic tag a sermon carries, hope appears on 21.9% of sermons and forgiveness on 18.5%, against 7.2% for anxiety (725 sermons). Hope was tagged about 3 times as often as anxiety. Other topics for hard seasons are in the chart. Topics with fewer than 30 sermons are not shown.
| Topic | Sermons | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Faith | 5,442 | 54.4% |
| Hope | 2,190 | 21.9% |
| Forgiveness | 1,850 | 18.5% |
| Healing | 853 | 8.5% |
| Anxiety | 725 | 7.2% |
| Grief | 533 | 5.3% |
| Marriage | 426 | 4.3% |
| Addiction and Recovery | 206 | 2.1% |
| Depression | 78 | 0.8% |
Share of 10,008 sermons with topic tags; a sermon carries about six tags, so shares add to far more than 100%.
The Bible books preached most and least
Romans, Matthew and John were the most cited books: 35.7%, 35.7% and 34.7% of sermons with scripture tags. 93.3% of those sermons cite at least one of the New Testament's 27 books and 70.4% cite at least one of the Old Testament's 39, so the New Testament has far more sermon attention per book. 7 books are cited in fewer than 30 sermons each, too few to publish a count: Song of Solomon, Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Philemon, 2 John, 3 John.
| Book | Sermons | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Romans | 3,554 | 35.7% |
| Matthew | 3,551 | 35.7% |
| John | 3,451 | 34.7% |
| Psalms | 3,039 | 30.5% |
| Ephesians | 2,250 | 22.6% |
| Acts | 2,148 | 21.6% |
| Genesis | 2,082 | 20.9% |
| 1 Corinthians | 2,081 | 20.9% |
| Hebrews | 2,044 | 20.5% |
| Luke | 1,997 | 20.1% |
| Isaiah | 1,756 | 17.7% |
| 2 Corinthians | 1,509 | 15.2% |
| Revelation | 1,350 | 13.6% |
| Philippians | 1,321 | 13.3% |
| Galatians | 1,212 | 12.2% |
Share of 9,948 sermons with scripture tags. A sermon can cite several books. The full list is in the CSV.
Where the sample comes from, and whether states differ
Only states with at least 30 sermons and 10 churches are listed (38 of 38). Among the 10 states with the most sermons, the discipleship tag is on 54.5% to 66.8% of sermons; KS is the highest (66.8%) and the other 9 fall between 54.5% and 60.9%. We did not test differences between states and do not claim a regional one: a state's figure reflects which of its churches post sermons and, in a sample this uneven, how many of them share a tradition.
| State | Sermons | Churches | Share of sample |
|---|---|---|---|
| TX | 1,631 | 632 | 16.3% |
| NC | 535 | 514 | 5.3% |
| FL | 525 | 508 | 5.2% |
| TN | 484 | 254 | 4.8% |
| OH | 458 | 446 | 4.6% |
| OK | 411 | 98 | 4.1% |
| MO | 383 | 154 | 3.8% |
| MI | 374 | 368 | 3.7% |
| IL | 373 | 359 | 3.7% |
| KS | 370 | 102 | 3.7% |
| VA | 339 | 331 | 3.4% |
| WA | 309 | 309 | 3.1% |
| IN | 308 | 305 | 3.1% |
| GA | 304 | 192 | 3% |
| SC | 299 | 290 | 3% |
The top 15 of 38 states shown here; all are in the CSV. We do not publish denomination figures: we do not have a reliable denomination for each church in this sample.
What was preached around big dates
On Sunday, November 1, 2026 (All Saints Sunday, two days before Election Day) the communion tag was on 22.9% of the 1,739 sermons that day, against about 6.9% on the other Sundays in this report after we re-weighted those Sundays to the same mix of states (398 sermons that day carried it). November 1 was also the first Sunday of the month, when many churches hold communion, and this sample cannot separate the two reasons. One other tag cleared our bar that day: grief, on 8.1% of sermons against about 4.3% (z = 4, just at our threshold of 4). All Saints is a day when many churches remember those who have died, which fits, but we looked at many tags and this is the weakest result here, so treat it as a lead and not a finding.
We also looked at Reformation Sunday (October 25, 2,658 sermons): "church history" was tagged on 8.5% of sermons against 5.8% on other Sundays, a gap too small to call reliable (z = 3.4). Tags for spiritual warfare showed no difference on either date. Election and politics tags were each on fewer than 30 sermons on Election Day weekend, so we cannot say anything about election-themed preaching. Halloween fell on a Saturday and its tags were too rare to measure.
Method for this section: each date is compared with the other Sundays in the report, re-weighted to its state mix, with a two-proportion z test. Only differences of at least 1.5 times and z of 4 or more are reported as findings; the holiday tags we named in advance are shown whatever the result. Different churches post on different Sundays, so these are descriptions, not proof of cause.
Which topics are rising or falling
We are not publishing a rising-and-falling trend, because this sample cannot support one. Of the 10,021 sermons, 7,325 are dated October 2026, 2,106 in the first days of November and 590 in September. The month-to-month rise mainly reflects how quickly we added churches, so a change in a topic's share would mostly measure who joined the sample. We will add a trend when there are several months with a stable group of churches.
Download, cite and reuse
Download the CSV Download the JSON
License: this report's text, charts and aggregate data are licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You may share and adapt them, including commercially, if you credit SermonWave and link to https://sermonwave.com/en/reports/what-churches-preached-on/. The license covers only this report. It does not cover the sermons, their transcripts, or any church's content, which belong to the churches and speakers.
The CSV holds every number on this page, plus the full book list and the per-state counts: section, key, label, sermons, base, percent and a note on how each row is built (the first rows state the license). The JSON carries the same numbers and a "license" field. To cite:
SermonWave, "What 7,386 U.S. Churches Preached On This Fall," November 4, 2026, https://sermonwave.com/en/reports/what-churches-preached-on/ (10,021 public English sermons from 7,386 U.S. churches, 2026-09-01 to 2026-11-04).
Questions about the method, or want a different cut? Write to team@sermonwave.com. We will correct anything we got wrong.