Developing A Preaching Calendar Part 3

Most church communicators do a good job of communication but is "good" enough. Planning out what you are doing through the year can lead to your church or ministry experiencing greater impact in relation to the content you produce.

I know that often sounds a little manufactured or mechanical. There is a huge segment of church speakers that believe "you must wait upon the Lord" to get the message for that weekend. And I honestly don't want to take anything away from that.

The point I want to make in this is that planning can take "waiting" to an even higher level.

Planning your year can:

• Focus Your Thoughts - Whenever I know what my upcoming messages are my mind goes to work on looking for illustrations/scriptures etc... I really see it as partnering with the Holy Spirit through life as a communicator. Often times I will find an illustration to an upcoming message when I'm watching a movie or reading a magazine/newspaper. If you know you got a certain series coming up on a certain topic, you can spend some extra time reading through all the Scriptures references for that topic.
• Allow Others To Input - I think this is the most highly under-used area of message development. God is a relational God and when we develop our messages with others we get a message that relates to people. Many pastors have seen the benefit of adding a creative team to add more elements to the message. "The successful company is not the one with the most brains, but the most brains acting in concert." Peter Drucker, Management guru
• Save Prep Time - How much time is wasted trying to figure out "what" your going to preach? With a plan you can streamline right into your preparation with the necessary tools.
  

How has planning ahead helped you???

Catch up with all of the parts of this series:

• Part 1 - Introduction
• Part 2 - God Can Speak To You In Advance
• Part 3 - Planning For Greater Impact
  
• Part 4 - Look Back Before You Look Ahead
• Part 5 - Schedule Before You Schedule: Major Holidays, Personal Time Off
• Part 6 - Branding Your Messages
  
• Part 7 - Create Momentum Before Your Major Events
• Part 8 - Creating With Your Team

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