How to Effectively Plan Preaching
The power of the pulpit can make the difference between success and failure in church planting. Because a church plant doesn’t have a multitude of ministries, the worship service must meet people’s needs. A key to meeting needs is a fresh, lively, inspiring, weekly message. Each week the congregation asks, “What is in this message for me?” The answer needs to be that the pastor’s messages help them make it from week to week. The people in the pew are all experts on preaching! They wouldn’t know how to put together a good message, but they can spot a bad message a mile away. The information age has made today’s church attendee more critical. Every day, believers can turn on or tune in to truly spectacular preaching. Men in multimillion dollar cathedrals, dressed in just the right outfit, can deliver a fine honed message in just under twenty-five minutes. It doesn’t matter to the congregation that those guys may have entire teams helping them to find just the right illustration. No one stops to think that those guys haven’t had to deal with a rental contract, set up issues, and a problem in the nursery. The fact that the sermon has been heavily edited doesn’t cross anyone’s mind. When it comes down to it, “Why can’t he deliver the way the guy I saw on tv,” is the question that is asked silently. Planning is the only way to leverage the congregations need against the time and budget available to most church planters. Annual sermon planning can greatly improve the quality of preaching by better using the time that is already set aside in pursuit of God’s message for His church. The purpose of this document is define what annual planning and to teach church planters how to be sermon planners. Finally, practical helps along the way will be reviewed to turbo charge weekly messages. How to Develop a Plan for Preaching At first, developing an annual plan for preaching may seem like an awkward idea. The pastor may wonder, “How will I know in January what I should preach next October?” The answer is that the pastor can’t know the specifics, but the pastor can have a general idea of the material that will be covered. The annual planning process isn’t painting in every word that will be said over the next 52 weeks; instead, it is sketching out what will be covered by the Sunday morning messages. Annual planning is best done when the church planter can get a few days away, by himself, on retreat. Many pastors choose to use their vacation time for annual planning, but this is especially unwise for the church planter. Often times
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the church planter’s family is already more engaged in ministry than the typical minister’s family. Don’t sacrifice precious family time. Instead, take a day retreat to a local state park or another place of quiet. Plan preaching based on the calendar. Some very effective pastors plan their sermons this way. They begin by setting aside the winter months for Bible study. Consider spending several weeks preaching through the book that was chosen for January Bible Study, this will be a great way to teach the material. There will be an abundance of resources available. In many areas of the country, through the book, expository type sermon series works well with winter attendance. The next set of sermons will be the Easter series. In planning for this critical time be aware that this is typically a good time for guest traffic. Easter Sunday is an important opportunity for growth. By thinking about it early it easier to tap into books, videos, and nation-wide promotions. The time between Easter and Mother’s Day is an ideal time for messages on the family. Sermons on home life are generally the most popular messages of the year. They are sought after because homes are crumbling throughout North America. By having an effective home life series that can be promoted the weeks prior to and including Easter Sunday, the attendance surge from Easter can last until Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day until Father’s Day is what could be called, “specialty preaching.” Two sermon topics have already been chosen. Throw in a sermon for the graduates and there is only one message left to plan. Something in the life of your church calendar can determine the remaining message. After Father’s Day, the hot, heat of summer falls. Now is the time to be most creative in sermon and church calendar planning. The goal is to have something so good the church family will wait until after church to leave for their vacation. Single sermon zingers on topics of interest will work. Summer time is a great time to cover hot topics (i.e. homosexuality), eschatology, and any series on selfimprovement (i.e. “How to Manage Your Money”). September brings the church family back together again, old routines are restarted. Mid-to-late September is a great time to start a new series. Each year, consider covering a Christian discipline like stewardship. This is a great time to bring the church family into a deeper level of commitment and begin good routines. October and into mid-November are ideal times for evangelistic preaching. This is the time the church plant should be setting the pace it will keep all year in bringing the lost to Christ. Sermons on salvation, evangelism, and missions can stir the body into effective service.
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The year ends with the holidays. Each year the messages will take a different approach. When planning Christmas sermons, prayerfully ask, “What is the most important message I can convey this year?” Here is a possible beginning point for an annual sermon plan: Winter Easter Spring Specialty Preaching Summer September October/Nov. December Series—“How to Do More with Less” Message Series through Philippians Series—He Did this Just for You, Max Lucado book & Video Series—Home Improvements “Seven Secrets to Happy Home Living” Mother’s Day: Great Mothers of the Bible Father’s Day: How to be a Success as Dad Assorted: “Bible in the Headlines” “How to Mark the End Times” Series: “How to Live Life by the Rules” Message Series, 10 Commandments Series: “How Everything Changes” Christmas Messages
This is only a sample calendar. A well planned calendar would have each Sunday’s date along with the proposed message or message series that would be covered that Sunday. If you have sermons already developed from a previous ministry and they will fit your plan, don’t hesitate to insert them. Also, don’t be worried if a few Sundays are left blank. Having 46 Sunday’s planned is much better than having none.
The Advantages of Sermon Planning Sermon planning helps the church planter by saving time on preparation. Planning reduces weekly stress. Planning ensures a variety of sermon topics.
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Strategic planning can put the entire church on the same calendar, develop a theme, and promote the messages with success. Finally, planning can engage others in the process of preparation so that even a church planter can have a team helping to create weekly messages. Planning cuts preparation time for each sermon because the church planter has a good idea of what sermons will be tackled over the next 12 months. Now that the plan is made, a file can be created for each Sunday. While preparing the message on Philippians, for example, an article may be discovered about family communication. Now that article has a place to go! Before it would be lost and each week the entire process would have to be started over again. Planning gives time to purchase books, listen to the tapes of others, read magazine articles while awaiting a hair cut; with a purpose. When the time comes to craft the message, fresh, relevant, insightful, material will be just a fingertip away. Instead of spending time trying to find material, now the time is spent deciding which material is best to use! This type of plan will greatly reduce the stress that delivering a fresh message each week can bring. Another advantage in developing a sermon plan is that the church planter can objectively review the next year’s preaching for variety, theological breadth, and church health. Preaching becomes stale when the pastor covers the same material over and over again. Church planters are in real danger of falling into a stale trap because of limits on their time. Furthermore, limits on budget that impact reading materials of a church planter, also hinder variety. As a result, many church plants suffer through the doldrums of repetitive preaching. Planning is the only effective way to overcome this problem. Planning keeps the church planter fresh. Effective planning allows the congregation the realistic expectation that each sermon will be fresh. It isn’t that a message has to be new; it just needs to be fresh. Fresh preaching fills the auditorium. One concept that successful church planters have learned is the importance of developing a theme and carrying out that theme through every ministry of the church. People in a post-modern world respond well to themes. Restaurants that didn’t have themes have pretty much gone away and have been replaced by food vendors with elaborate themes in place. Everything from Tex-Mex to authentic Italian works as long as it is done well. Planning is the critical key to bringing a theme to life in a church. What if part of the sermon plan included six weeks in the book of Deuteronomy? Don’t look at it as six weeks studying the book of Deuteronomy. That won’t pack much of a punch to the Christian community, let alone those needing lifechange. That same series could be repackaged into, “How to Succeed in Life—
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Lessons from the Ancients,” and begin the process of having a theme. If that message series is four months away, you can bring the idea to your leadership team for development; however small it may be. Think about ways to incorporate “Lessons from the Ancients” into the worship and praise time. Now go the next step and imagine how the small groups can be impacted by this theme. What about the youth and the children? The point is that the entire church can be on the same page, preaching can be fresher than ever; but it’s going to take some planning. Developing a theme through planning will have two incredibly powerful impacts on ministry. First, a theme will explode the creative genius in you and those around you. If you ever wondered how the church down the road did so many creative things in worship, with preaching; the answer is they did it through planning. Second, a planned theme will dramatically increase the number of people participating in the morning message. When a greater number of people have ownership, the attendance goes up. Keep that in mind for summer series. Promoting the theme from a well planned series will be easier. Instead of trying to promote that a message is going to be preached next Sunday, now there is a presentation to experience. The church plant is offering something that isn’t available on television or radio. Preaching has moved into an entirely new league. Another great thing about planning is that even a church planter can have a preaching team. It is impossible for one person to stay up to date with everything available on any particular subject. Through planning, a church planter can see that there is a need for a group of books to be read on a particular subject. Next, he can invite individual members of the preaching team to read selected books for him. The preaching team works when members highlight key points, point out fresh illustrations, and explain some new Biblical insight from any selected text. A team approach can cut hours off of preparation time. It allows the church planter to have the meat of a book without having to wade through the fat. Furthermore, the membership grows in their relationship to Christ because they are studying Godly things. For many, this is a fantastic ministry opportunity. Assignments such as, “please cut out every article in the paper on family violence,” can also engage the entire congregation in sermon preparation. A church planter can have a bigger sermon preparation staff than most televangelists! The key is to plan and to use what the congregation gives you as often as possible. (Use the material often to keep workers encouraged. However, don’t point out in the message where the information came from. The
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team will hear their work. Occasionally, drop a thank you note when something very useful comes through.) Turbo-Charged Preaching Preaching is at its best when it is Biblical, when it is fresh, and when it connects with the congregation. Planning isn’t a tool to make preaching stoic, in fact it has the opposite effect. By laying out a plan to key leaders they can embrace the direction that God is leading the church planter to guide the church. More importantly, they can actively participate in the weekly development of the message and the regular development of a church-wide theme. To turbo-charge planning follow a few simple rules: 1. Always be sensitive to the Spirit. A calendar is a good guide. However, if another September 11th happens, don’t be such a slave to the plan that there isn’t flexibility in hearing from the Lord. 2. Prayerfully develop the calendar. Remember that the time spent making the calendar is critical time in the life of your church. Be sure that above everything, you have a close fellowship with God. 3. Listen to your people. The hand-shakes at the end of the service won’t say nearly as much as the possible feedback from asking for articles on any subject. People will communicate their needs, their disappointments, their fears, and even how to improve the sermon if the avenue is given. 4. Be faithful to preach the entire Word of God. The purpose of planning is to challenge preaching to cover the breadth of the Gospel. 5. With the exception of September 11th, if you announce it, preach it! The congregation won’t trust the church planter who plans one sermon but delivers another. Congregations spend very little time thinking about preaching. They have never studied what makes a good or bad sermon. They couldn’t write a sermon if forced too. However, in the final analysis, they measure preaching. Their only barometer is, “Did that message meet our needs?”
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