As you plan, you will want to know about denominational happenings such as world hunger day, missions days, evangelism days and other emphasis days. Although you will probably not observe every denominational emphasis, many of these special days can benefit the spiritual life of your congregation. Ensure that you take the calendars from your local association of churches as well as regional and national denominational calendars.

5. Take a civic and community calendar.

The civic calendar will list holidays and national or state-wide events. The community calendar will tell you when school begins and ends, the dates of the county fair, the nights of the big high school football games, and other similar local events. Knowing when these things will take place can be of great help to you in scheduling the events and programs at your church.

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6. Take basic Bible study tools.

The purpose of the retreat is to plan your sermons, not to prepare them. Nevertheless, you will have opportunity to do some valuable preliminary work on the sermons that you will be preaching in the coming year, and you will need to take some books to help you do this. Books that will be most helpful to you in planning your preaching are reference works such as a Bible dictionary, an exhaustive concordance, a topical Bible, and a systematic theological textbook as well as commentaries on any books through which you intend to preach in the coming year.

7. Take a list of the previous year's sermon subjects and texts.

Part of your planning process will include looking backward at the work you or your predecessor did in the pulpit the year before. You will need to compile as complete a list as possible of the subject and text for every sermon preached at your church in the previous year. After you have completed a year's cycle of planned preaching, this list will be easy to generate. If it is your first time to plan your preaching year, or if you have begun a new pastorate, a collection of last year's church bulletins will give you a picture of the themes that you or the previous pastor have addressed.

8. Take a Preaching Strategy Worksheet.

In my book Planning Your Preaching (Kregel), I discuss the development of a Preaching Strategy Worksheet. You might complete this before you go on the retreat, or you might choose to complete it while you are on the retreat. In either case, you will want to have a well-articulated preaching strategy in front of you as you plan your preaching. It will help remind you of your audience and their needs and will aid you in determining the subjects and themes for your preaching.

Once you have gathered these and other helpful materials, you are ready to leave for a week during which you will plan the preaching program for the coming year. A preacher going on a planning retreat would do well to pick a location that is conducive to extended prayer, study, and planning. Your work during the planning retreat itself will consist of reviewing the previous year's preaching, planning biblical and thematic series, and creating your preaching calendar.