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Preaching Schedule
As a young pastor, I’ve just been preaching about whatever I feel inspired to preach. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to preach on Sunday morning until Saturday night. I don’t want to eliminate all spontaneity or being led by the Spirit, but should I have some kind of “preaching overview schedule” to make sure I cover certain topics each and every year? How do other pastors plan their preaching schedule and establish which topics they’re going to cover over the course of a year to ensure their people receive a well-rounded diet?
Responses:
Pastor Dave Williams – Lansing, MI
This is every pastor’s struggle – the schedule! I’m going to attach our 2009 preaching schedule that may help you.
I try to get away for a few days every year between Christmas and New Years, just to seek the Lord and lay plans for the next year. I try to look at our values first, our doctrines second, our vision third, and finally special events.
After that, you can prayerfully plan your annual series, leaving a few Sunday’s for those single messages on your heart. I personally keep it fairly flexible. For example, I had one of our associate ministers scheduled to speak on Father’s Day this year, but on the day before, I felt I had a “word from the Lord” for our congregation, so I simply rescheduled him and preached on Father’s Day myself.
You may want to consider covering each of your major doctrines during the year. Perhaps you are sensing a family emphasis is needed. Plan a four-week series on Family Life. Keep flexible for current events that relate to biblical prophecy or biblical warnings. Oftentimes, when God puts something special on your heart, and you want to be “spontaneous,” the Holy Spirit will show you how to gracefully weave it into your series, even though at first you won't see how.
God bless you, pastor!
[download tentative schedule]
Pastor Sam Smucker – Lancaster, PA
Over the last 5 years I have seen the importance of doing more prayerful planning ahead for ministering the Word to the congregation. The Holy Spirit is in the planning. I agree we need to always be open to the Holy Spirit leading us to do something spontaneous in our services. We plan ahead 4-6 months what to minister to the congregation. Usually we do 4-8 week series on subjects that we sense are needed to be taught. For example this summer we did a 10 week series called “Red Letters” in which we focused on some of the teachings of Jesus. In between the series we usually have several weeks of stand alone messages where we address topics we are sensing need to be taught. Then of course we have Mother’s & Father’s Day messages, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other special messages. To purposefully plan what to teach our congregations brings forth increased spiritual growth in people’s lives.
Pastor Patrick Norris – Overland Park, KS
I think a leader has to be aware of their overall direction and then begin to prayerfully strategize the calendar from there. For us, we believe there are three special seasons of the year that God is already moving on people to take steps towards Him in salvation and church attendance...
- February
- Easter
- September/October
In these seasons it seems that church numerical growth opportunities are already in motion. Our heart is to see what God is ALREADY doing in people’s minds/hearts and sync up with that, rather than trying to get a big evangelism hit on other months of the calendar. Also, these three times of the year are easy to build into the memories/DNA of present members. They anticipate these seasons to make the big invitation to unchurched friends. We encourage folk to build relational trust and friendship all year long. Then during these seasons, be extra prayerful and expectant for the harvest of your seeds of love sown. From that premise the following is how we approach our annual calendar...
1. January
Strategy: Giving our members inspiration, preparation and tools for the New Year
Topics: Emphasize spiritual discipline/practices and have church wide 21-day fasts preparing for the year and for the February harvest time.
2. February
Strategy: People are settling down from the holidays and are looking
Topics: “Felt needs” series targeting our unchurched friends like Claims of Christ, Emotional Baggage, Wounds, Dealing with Gray Areas, 30 Days to Live, etc.
3. March
Strategy: After people first arrive at church they come with relationship issues so we use March to lead into relational connections
Topics: “Relationships” like marriage, parenting, small groups stuff, etc.
4. April
Strategy: This is where we do our financial stewardship emphasis each year, which might include a capital stewardship campaign
Topics: We focus on spending plans, Biblical models of giving, faith, grace of living...all in the context and emphasis of personal transformation into Christ-likeness (we never make the focus about the money or blessing, but on the heart and what this process does to change marriages, parenting, business, etc.)
5. May
Strategy: Due to the intense nature of the April stewardship series we like to make this a lighter topic
Topics: Q&A (people ask anything they want and we deal with it), Urban Legends, etc.
6. June
Strategy: Due to vacations of staff, this month is part video-teaching of some of the best speakers in the world and live with various staff members
Topics: OnePrayer.com (LifeChurch.tv)
7. July
Strategy: This is a time we spend with various doctrinal issues)
Topics: Characters of Scripture, faith, miracles, gifts of the Holy Spirit, etc.
8. August
Strategy: We have an emphasis each year on renewing our membership covenant and a 1-year commitment to various serving teams. This is an intense season of praying, fasting and preparing for the harvest of our seeds of love sown into our friendships with unchurched people.
Topics: Anything that has to do with the “doctrine of the church,” serving others, small groups, or other church core values.
9. September
Strategy: Another harvest season
Topics: “Felt needs” series that target the unchurched like, “At the Movies” (A series that uses the emotion of famous, modern movie clips to communicate ideas. Example: the movie “Remember the Titans” shows a conflict between two football programs that are made to play as one team. Race, prejudice and other factors created conflicts that seem to doom their success. Their wrong perceptions of others fueled the conflict. When they overcame their prejudice they had amazing victories. We will show a clip and then talk about the concept. In this series the application is how many people have contempt and anger toward God based on wrong perceptions. We talk about those wrong perceptions and remove them for the people so they can have victories with God)
10. October
Strategy: Same as March but with a greater assimilation emphasis to get them into small groups and relational transformation
11. November
Strategy: This is a time that doctrine is driven again much like July
12. December
Strategy: Christmas issues, where people struggle during the holidays, grace and peace
If there is some topic we sense God moving on our hearts to emphasize, often we can get it done by integrating/emphasizing that topic as we use the backdrop of each of these month’s foundational focus. For instance, if we are in the month of April and helping people move forward with the whole financial stewardship thing, and at the same time sense God dealing with our hearts about the need to press into miracles, we take both those and present the topic in a unified way.
Obviously every church is different but this is how we believe God leads us to roll.
