Talk to your team. You may be the senior-pastor of your congregation. But you are not the only person of influence the Lord has placed in the body life of that church. There may be associate pastors, church officers or ministry leaders who have helpful recommendations for your preaching in the year to come. Or there may be nonofficial leaders in your church whose opinion you value. There may even be new or young members whom you can talk to as plan your preaching. Indeed, there is wisdom in having a multitude of counselors. Take advantage of the perspectives of godly people you trust to plan your preaching.
Go through the calendar. At this point, I print down a blank monthly calendar for the coming 12 months. I then mark the holidays that fall on Sundays or impact Sundays. I also take note of the special days in the life of the church that will guide my preaching. For instance, our Prayer Emphasis Week is every January. I use those two Sundays to preach on prayer. October is our Stewardship Emphasis Month, during which I will preach on financial stewardship.
I also put down the Sundays that I do not intend to preach. It is probably best that a pastor be in his pulpit about 45 Sundays of the year. But the hard number is not most important. What matters is that you plan certain Sundays when you will not preach. The bow that is always bent will soon break. You need to be delivered from the sweet bondage of weekly preparation occasionally. You may not be able to take an extended sabbatical, as some do. But have a mini-vacation from the pulpit. Use special days like church anniversaries, missions emphasis days or whatever, to bring in a guest speaker. Preach some of the young men around you. By any means necessary, take a break to recharge your batteries!
The biggest part of my sermon planning is choosing the series I am going to preach. My custom is to preach through books of the Bible. (I try to stick to a pattern: OT book, thematic series and NT book.)
Many teachers of preaching recommend that you preach short series (four to six weeks, at the most). But I generally preach longer series. I don’t spend years in books. But I do try to preach them in their natural divisions, which sometimes requires 20 or more sermons.
Consecutive exposition through books aids sermon planning. I pre-study the book enough to divide it into divisions I will preach. I may even pick a title for each sermon. I determine my start date. Then I start filling in the blanks in my calendar, skipping over holidays, special days or Sundays I am out of the pulpit. The calendar fills up quickly.
One more thing …
Be flexible. Like the Sabbath, the preaching plans are made for the preacher, not preachers for the preaching plan. Don’t be a slave to a preaching calendar. If a natural disaster or tragedy takes place that should be addressed, do it. If there is an issue in your community or city or the larger culture that needs a Christian perspective, do it. If you are led, for whatever reason, to ditch your plan for a week or two to preach something else, by all means, do it.
Once you complete your sermon calendar, your work is not done. You must review it continuously. Think about where you may need to change courses along the way. Ask the Lord to edit in what he wants in and edit out what he wants out. A bad page is better than a blank page. The fact that plans may need to change is not a reason not to plan at all. Your sermon calendar is a plan to work from throughout the year. Trust God to use your planning to strengthen your preaching, nurture you congregation and honor the scriptures.
Remember, one who fails to plan plans to fail.
What steps or tools have you found helpful in developing a sermon calendar?
