Fill the gaps in your plan with individual sermons. After you have scheduled your series, you are likely to have on your calendar services for which you have planned no sermons. Examine your overall strategy to determine doctrinal themes, ethical and moral issues, and spiritual matters that you need to address to fill in these spaces. Although you will want to fill in as many gaps as possible, it is best to leave one Sunday morning and one Sunday evening service blank every three months. Unforeseen circumstances will inevitably arise that will force you to alter your plan. By leaving a service blank every twelve weeks or so, you can shift the schedule when necessary.
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Reviewing and Modifying the Plan
Now that the preaching calendar is complete, look back over each month. Using the Preaching Strategy Worksheet as a guide, check to see if the plan fulfills your goals for the coming year's pulpit work. Following are some questions to ask as you review the calendar.
• Is the plan complete in that it lists a subject and text for each preaching event in the coming year?
• Do the sermon subjects and texts cover the essential biblical teachings that members of your church should hear in a year's time? • Have you maximized holidays and ordinances by preaching sermons pertinent to those special days? • Have you programmed some flexibility into the calendar? • Is your preaching balanced in terms of both subject matter and the portions of the Bible from which you will preach? • Have you included any creative approaches to preaching that differ from your normal sermonic patterns? • When taken as a whole, does your preaching plan meet the objectives that you established in your preaching strategy?
In addition to this initial review, you will want to evaluate your preaching plan several times throughout the year. Monitor your progress on the plan monthly. Consider whether you are sticking to the plan or if parts of the schedule are proving unworkable. Check on the series you are preaching through books of the Bible to see if the preaching portions represent the best way to divide the book. Rethink the preaching objectives that you originally set for yourself in light of the changing climate of your congregation and community. If changes are necessary, don't be reluctant to make them. The need for modification does not mean that your initial plan was not good. Remember, the plan is a servant, not a master. It is a guide that can be changed as your journey through a year of preaching unfolds.
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Stephen Neslon Rummage is associate pastor of preaching at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
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1. Wayne McDill, The Twelve Essential Skills for Great Preaching (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 272.
2. Bryan Chapell, Christ-centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 55.
3. J. Winston Pearce, Planning Your Preaching (Nashville: Broadmad, 1967), 5.
4. Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988), 160-62. Richard Foster, A Celebration of Discipline, rev. ed. (San Franciso: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988), 96-109.
5. Pearce, Planning Your Preaching, 5.
6. Andrew Blackwood, Planning a Year's Pulpit Work (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1942), 17.