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What I Have Discovered: Where Pastors Share Their Ideas with Fellow Pastors
Article: "Planning Ahead"
By Stan Mast , LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan
In Philippians 3:1 (RSV), Paul writes, "To write the same things to you is not irksome to me, and it is safe for you." Maybe so, but that was then, and this is now. When we keep preaching the same old things the same old way, it may be safe, but I'm pretty sure that modern congregations find it awfully irksome. I'm not arguing that we should preach new things. Indeed, I think we should become suspicious of ourselves if our congregations say to us, "Pastor, we've never heard that before." It is, after all, the "old, old story" that we preach. I'm not advocating for novelty in what we preach, but in how we preach it.
One of the keys to presenting the gospel with freshness is preparing a schedule for preaching that looks at least six months ahead. That may seem counterintuitive. Doesn't planning that far ahead kill spontaneity, quench the Spirit, put you in a homiletical straitjacket? What if something happens in your congregation that cries out for a Word from the pulpit? Well, of course, then you set aside your carefully developed preaching calendar. But as a general rule, advanced planning will result in fresher, more creative preaching, for two reasons.
First, a six-month calendar of subjects, texts, and series provides an overview of your preaching. Are you covering all dimensions of the gospel? I have often heard it said that most preachers have six or seven themes they keep developing over and over again. We need to be careful that we don't ride hobby horses. Planning ahead enables you to give your people a balanced diet.
Second, planning ahead gives me hooks for my reading, both biblical and extra-biblical. For me the key to staying fresh is a broad reading program-secular magazines like Time and Sports Illustrated, Christian journals like The Christian Century, popular Christian books by the likes of Yancey and Ortberg, heavy theology like Moltmann's Theology of Hope, biographies like Master of the Senate, classics like The Grapes of Wrath, Christian novels like Enger's Peace Like a River, and lots of contemporary secular novels. And, of course, undergirding them all is a daily reading of the Bible.
The problem for many of us is that when we read a lot, we forget a lot. It all tends to wash over, rather than sink in. Recovering what you've read so that it can give new perspective and illustrate abstract points is difficult. But if I know that I'm going to be preaching a series on "Promises for the Bleak Mid-Winter," I'm alert to any references to winter. If a Lenten series will focus on the person of Christ, I'm on the lookout for anything that will enliven sermons on a subject that most of my listeners already understand very well. Without the hooks provided by advanced planning, a great deal of that reading would be lost. That's even true in my Bible reading. An advanced calendar helps me make connections I might otherwise miss.
It has been said that the greatest sin a preacher can commit is to bore people. I think it's more serious to preach heresy. But to preach the incredible truth of the gospel in a boring way, so that people find it irksome, is surely a close second. For me, advanced planning is a key strategy against that homiletical sin.