Sunday Morning Planning

The other day my partner Dean and I were talking about planning and letting God move in our Sunday morning experience.

There seems to be two schools of thought out in ministry on this issue. School one is that we need to let the Holy Spirit flow and have control. School number two is plan and detail out every minute.

Dean and I felt that we at Journey Church are right in the middle of the two.

Over the next few posts I want to expound on a great process that I feel you could implement that might help you be more effective as well as let you in on my thoughts on ministry planning for church gatherings in any setting.

There are often times in the past that I have been accused of being very rigid and not allowing the Holy Spirit to flow. That I want to plan out every detail. Truth be told...I do want to have every detail planned out...but not at the expense of not having God in control. For me God controls the aspect of the plan. He controls the elements of the plan. So for me...Sunday morning is all about God being in control.

Remember there are three elements we are working with on Sunday mornings.

1. Staff and Volunteers
2. New First Time Guests
3. Committed Members or Partners in Ministry

Now all three of these kind of work in sync with each other especially if you want to be effective.

Your staff and volunteers need to know what is going on if they are to know what they need to do.

Because people crave order and structure...new guests should be presented with a presentation that doesn't look like it was just thrown together.

*** Side Note - (Tell me the truth...if you went to a restaurant that was chaotic and due to it the service was poor...the environment was filthy...they got your order wrong...WOULD YOU GO BACK??? Why then do we not have that expectation of what we put out? I guarantee that our guests do.)

Your committed members and partners also deserve our best as well. People will put up with a lot for a long time...but given the option who knows.


I think we all can agree that there should be some planning when it comes to our gatherings. So then how much is too much. Tomorrow, I'll try to go to the other extreme. Although that one is going to be harder for me.

Then I will try to post on how I think it might can work in a balanced approach.