Planning Your Preaching
By Manly R. Luscombe
Part 1 - Needs and advantages to planning your preaching.
 I preach 90 to 100 sermons per year. I also teach about 100 adult Bible classes (Sunday and Wednesday). If all I had to do was study and prepare lessons, I could make it. But the church also needs someone to write letters, conduct funerals, visit the hospital, nursing homes, counsel troubled people, encourage members, plan Vacation Bible School. The list goes on and on. How can I find the time to prepare the sermons needed? It will take some planning.
I realized I needed some way to plan sermons because:
 The week is short - "It is Monday, but Sunday is coming"
I preach 2 sermons every week except one Sunday PM each month is a special worship in song. I preach 90 to 100 sermons each year.
I also teach two adult Bible classes each week. I must prepare materials and teach about 100 adult classes each year.
Then there are the other obligations of the work - funerals, sickness, counseling, visitation.
I also have some family obligations - wife, family time, little league, etc.
Once I got started, I realized some great advantages of long-range planning.
Planning removes the anxiety of what to preach next Sunday.
It will keep you alert for material, articles, books, and illustrations. You know what topics and texts are coming in the next weeks and months. When in a bookstore, I will find a book on Ezekiel and knowing that I will be preaching from this book later in the year helps me decide to buy it.
Having materials collected, books read, articles saved makes preparation time shorter.
Planning will keep your preaching balanced - no hobbies, OT and NT, expository and topical.
It requires the preacher to study new material - I have to study books and topics that I might have avoided or neglected otherwise. You can not get by with a warmed over outline from the past.
Where planning comes in most useful is when you have "one of those weeks". One of thoes weeks when you have two funerals, a member with serious surgery, a marriage falling apart requiring hours of counseling, and the washing machine breaks down. We can sometimes become so distracted that sermons, reading, and study time, seem to take a back seat.
If you are just beginning a life in the ministry, planning your sermons will help you be better organized. Too many ministers wait until Friday or Saturday to begin thinking about their Sunday sermons. The people should expect us to be better prepared.
If you have been preaching for many years, you will appreciate the challenge to preach from new material. Many preachers have preached for years and never preached some topics or books of the Bible.
I am convinced that planning your sermons is vital to your long-term ministry in a church.
Part 2 - The forms I use
The forms I use are in Word format but I will try to describe the forms. I use three forms.
Annual Form
I begin to select one OT book for each quarter of the year. I then select one NT book and a topic. I mix selections rather than go straight though the Bible. My annual form for 2002 would look like this:
| Annual Planning Sheet for 2002 |
| Quarter |
OT |
NT |
Topic |
| 1 |
Exodus |
2 Timothy |
Worship |
| 2 |
Proverbs |
Luke |
Christian Evidences |
| 3 |
Ezekiel |
Hebrews |
Moral Values |
| 4 |
Ruth, Esther |
Galatians |
Marriage |
In a short time (1 hour or less) you can plan sermons for 3-10 years in advance. You will learn that you can include many topical studies, OT and NT books and not repeat yourself for several years. This will give you the balanced preaching and a variety of texts and subject matter.
Quarterly Form
I plan about 7 or 8 sermons each from OT, NT and topic.
| 1st quarter of 2000 |
| Number |
OT |
NT |
Topic |
| Number |
OT - Numbers |
NT - 1 Timothy |
Topic - Strike Original Match |
1 |
Nazarite 6:1-21 |
Vow Law for Lawless 1:9-11 |
Architect |
| 2 |
Cloud & Fire 9:15-23 |
Ignorance 1:12-15 |
Bricks, 1 |
| 3 |
Manna, Quail 11 |
Shipwreck Faith 1:18-20 |
Bricks, 2 |
| 4 |
Grasshoppers 13:25-33 |
One Mediator 2:1-5 |
Imitation Bricks, 1 |
| 5 |
Moses' Sin 20:1-12 |
Men and Women 2:8-15 |
Imitation Bricks, 2 |
| 6 |
Brass Serpent 21:4-9 |
Desire The Office 3:1-5 |
Termites |
| 7 |
Balaam 22-24 |
Deacons 3:8-13 |
New Year |
| 8 |
Cities Refuge 35:9-34 |
Widows Indeed 5:5-15 |
Valentines Day |
Monthly
After I have the sermons planned for the quarter, I take three sheets of paper, one for each month and I decide when and where each should be placed on the 3 monthly sheets. The monthly sheet would look like this.
Month - January, 2000
Sermons needed this month - 9
|
| Date |
AM |
PM |
| 2 |
New Year |
Architect |
| 9 |
Bricks, 1 |
Bricks, 2 |
| 16 |
Shipwrecked Faith |
SINGING |
| 23 |
Grasshoppers |
Deacons |
| 30 |
Termites |
Baalam |
Using these forms you can plan your preaching for 8 or 10 years in advance.
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