Planning a Preaching Calendar for a Multichurch District

Within three months of my seminary graduation, I received a call to pastor two churches in the Tampa Bay area. I could not wait. In the midst of daydreaming, I began a mental checklist of the things I had learned in the seminary that I wanted to begin implementing in my churches. Everything seemed perfect.

But then a surge of adrenaline hit me: How would I go about planning a preaching calendar? And how would I deal with preaching in two churches? After doing research and making calls, I discovered a system for planning a preaching calendar that I wanted to experiment with.¹

Early lessons

Before I implemented the system, I first wanted to get a taste for how preaching was normally conducted in my local churches. So I prepared two four-part sermon series. My eight sermons would give me time to see how preaching normally happened.

Because I had two churches, I would preach in one church one week, the other the next. On the week in which I was not there, an elder would preach on his or her own topic.

Right away I noticed problems. For one, there was no continuity because the congregation heard the next part of my series only every other week. Second, because the elders would preach on whatever they felt like, the quality of the sermons varied. And, to make things worse, I began to hear complaints that many of the speakers would preach on odd and divisive topics. I knew that something had to be done quickly.

First moves

The first step was to assemble a sermon planning group.² Having two churches, I selected seven people from each church and began to share the process. Their first task would be to “solicit feedback from family members, neighbors, and friends about topics that would interest them in the coming year.”³ They would do this for 30 days. At the end, we would debrief and begin to plan out series topics together.

I shared with the group that going through such a process would have the following benefits:

1. Minimize stress on the speakers, as they would know well in advance what they would be speaking on.

2. Help ensure a balanced spiritual diet for the congregation.

3. The worship teams could tailor the whole service around a common theme.

4. The church could give out invitation cards and post advertisements.

As I shared the vision, I could feel the excitement building. They understood that by being extremely intentional about the preaching calendar, many different aspects of the church would benefit. I left that group meeting feeling encouraged and excited about the process.

Lessons learned since

I have since gone through the process five times in five years with different teams. And, as a result, here are a few points I have learned.

1. Make sure to have as many of your key leaders in the first group as possible. This will help ensure corporate acceptance, as they are able to experience the process firsthand. In subsequent years, when they hear you are gathering another sermon planning group, they will not be alarmed or suspicious.

2. Plan to have different people in the group every year. Let the initial group know in the first meeting that the members of the group will change every year. I noticed some resistance to this idea from some of my leaders in the first group. They wanted to remain filters for the topics and somehow still control the messages. This is exactly why you should not have the same people every year. Different people have different friends and will offer different perspectives. Having a diversity of people every year will help enrich the experience.

3. Clarify the intended audience. I made the mistake the first year of not clarifying the intended audience, and so everyone just spoke to their religious friends for suggestions. Things became awkward because many of the suggestions dealt with theological oddities, like the meaning of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and so forth. Since then, I encourage people to get views from different sources, even from the unchurched. This will help ensure that the sermons maintain a balanced perspective.

Leading the debriefing meeting

At end of the 30 days, plan to have a retreat-style debriefing that will last about four hours. I have had these debriefings in various locations but have found homes to be the best places. Providing breakfast will go a long way towards building a sense of camaraderie and helping the group think clearly.

After breakfast, people can begin presenting their reports. Be sure to write down the main themes on large poster-sized paper that can then be torn off and stuck to a wall. After every person presents his or her report, you should have a wall with about twelve to fifteen large posters, allowing you to have a broad perspective of themes. Because each poster will have about 10–15 themes, it becomes necessary to whittle these down. You will quickly notice similar themes that can be consolidated right away. After that process, you will still be left with dozens of themes. So how do you select the most important and relevant ones?

I have found it helpful to place people into groups of four. Then ask each person to share his or her top five themes with fellow group members, who then, as a whole, will recommend five themes to the larger group. This kind of democratic process will help dissipate any control issues that might arise and will help give every person a voice.

You want about 15 major themes— more than enough to take you through a preaching calendar year.

Next you will want the group’s perspective on how many topics a particular series should receive. I also try to get suggestions for possible topics and titles to address within the given series. So, if they suggest a series on forgiveness, I might ask, “What are the issues associated with forgiveness that should be addressed?” In past groups, people have suggested topics such as “Why Should We Forgive?” and “How Do We Forgive?” and “What Are the Benefits of Forgiveness?”

By the time everything is done, you should have a lot of information— about 15 series themes with about four possible titles for each series.

The priority is now outlining these series on a calendar in order to provide balance and proper edification. Some topics might serve well as an evangelistic series in which people are challenged to invite friends; others might be more of “building” series, to disciple and edify the church. You will have to take the time and prayerfully consider with your team where the series are placed in the calendar.

Preaching

After everything is done, I will usually give the final preaching calendar to my elders and have them select which topics within a series they would feel most comfortable preaching. This works much better than just trying to schedule the speakers in where I think they should be. They are more comfortable because they participated in the process, and were able to select their place.

This procedure will definitely challenge your preaching elders. For many of them, this will be the first time they will speak on a variety of topics. You will need to provide mentorship and training for them. Share resources. Let them know where they can find commentaries. Teach them how to develop an outline from a given pericope. Not only will you grow, but your elders will become more confident and comfortable preaching on different topics. Beyond that, your churches will be blessed as they experience a higher level of quality, consistency, and unity through the preaching of God’s Word.