9/24/2017 How to plan a preaching schedule | Pastor Mark Driscoll

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06 MAR HOW TO PLAN A PREACHING

SCHEDULE
Posted at 05:20h in Blog by Mark Driscoll
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Got a preaching and teaching question for Pastor Mark Driscoll? Check out previous
topics in this series, and send your questions to preachteach@marshill.com. In this
post,Pastor Mark Driscoll gives an overview of his process for guring out what to
preach next.

Pastor Mark,

I know that you have your sermon series planned out well in advance. How do you
determine the book or topic of your series? What are some practical things to think
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9/24/2017 How to plan a preaching schedule | Pastor Mark Driscoll

about when trying to decide what to preach or teach on in the coming months or year?

Chad

Chad,

Thank you for caring about preaching Gods Word and giving me an opportunity to
help you think through how to do that. The Bible commands us to preach the word,
but it does not give us a singular method for doing so. Therefore, we lean on things
like prayer, wisdom, and counsel to determine what will be the best way for us to
preach the word.

So, I will share with you what I do and some of the logic behind it, fully knowing it may
not be best for your context, but I hope its helpful nonetheless.

WHERE TO BEGIN
I start by sketching out the books and topical series I am really excited about and
believe to be most timely for our people. Unlike a lot of Bible teachers, I do not see
the pulpit as merely a classroom lectern. My goal is not merely to teach, but to lead
the church through the pulpit. I want to consider what work God has for us next, and
how to lead that e ort by preaching Gods Word.

After I get a few ideas, I then take a day of silence and solitude to repent of sin, pray,
read Scripture, sketch out plans, and try to develop a plan for the upcoming 1824
months. Once my plan starts to solidify, I submit it to the Mars Hill Church executive
elders for consideration. They make suggestions and help me ensure that I am under
authority and getting godly counsel for the preaching schedule.

I nd that the more organized I am, the better prepared my team will be to work with
me. Right now, for example, I know the pulpit schedule (who is preaching what and
when) for the next 18 monthsand so does my team.

CAMPAIGNS
At Mars Hill Church, we organize our teaching around campaigns. A campaign is
more than a sermon series; it involves linking your entire church or ministry up to your
pulpit and pushing one big idea through every aspect of your church or ministry.

The pulpit is not the only piece.

Practically, this means making the pulpit a central piece, but not the only piece. It
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9/24/2017 How to plan a preaching schedule | Pastor Mark Driscoll
Practically, this means making the pulpit a central piece, but not the only piece. It
means doing some hard work to plan out how to tie your sermons into your small
groups, your counseling, your events, your design, your online strategy, and more.
Mars Hill and I give away a lot of these resources and sell some others, if youre
looking for examples.

SEASONS OF MINISTRY
In addition to campaigns, it is helpful to know the seasonal cycle of your ministry. This
varies from place to place. In a military town, attendance can uctuate a great deal
with deployments. In a college town, the summers usually see a major plummet in
attendance. In a place like Phoenix, where people ee during the hottest months, the
same can be true. In places like Seattle and Alaska where the winters can be long and
dark, people tend to be out and about a lot during the summer enjoying the good
weather. Conversely, in places like Southern California where the weather is nice year-
round, it is possible for a church to actually grow during the summer.

No seasonal rhythm is set in stone, but the following has been my experience at Mars
Hill.

EARLY HARVEST

For most of our churches, we have two major harvest seasons. The rst is in the fall,
from Labor Day through Thanksgiving. Summer vacations are over, the rainy season
starts, schools are back in session, new people have moved into the area, and our
attendance swells. At this time we start a new sermon series (this year at Mars Hill, it
will be the Ten Commandments), all of our ministries kick into high gear (especially
our Community Groups), and it is imperative that everything launch strongly for the
sake of momentum.

REST

For our church, the time between Thanksgiving and New Years is a bit at. Some
churches are Christmas churches, and others are Easter churches. Our biggest day of
the year by far is always Easter, never Christmas. We have so many singles, college
students, and newly married couples without kids that they tend to leave town to visit
family during the holidays. We also have a lot of rst generation Christians who didnt
grow up with the tradition of going to church on Christmas.

So for us, the holidays are a time to have a lot of parties for our people to love and
enjoy one another. During this time I do a shorter series called Gods Work, Our
Witness where I recap what God has done the prior year and what we are calling our
people to for the upcoming year. The series includes a nancial year-end push to
make budget and end the year strong. We generally shut down the o ce for the
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9/24/2017 How to plan a preaching schedule | Pastor Mark Driscoll

week after Christmas and catch our breath.

The big harvest culminates on Easter.

BIG HARVEST

From January through Easter we see our highest attendance of the year. Football can
mess up some of the Sundays (especially Super Bowl Sunday, which has become
something of a religious holiday in the States), but we plan on moving full steam
ahead during this time. We black out a couple key chunks of this time, no vacations or
extra breaks for sta members.

During the big harvest is when we have our largest campaign of the year, and we
push the hardest. Last year, our major campaign was Real Marriage. This year, its
Ephesians: Who Do You Think You Are? Next year, Im working on what I think will be
the biggest thing Ive ever done. It is such a massive project it will take a full year to
pull it all together.

The big harvest culminates on Easter. We love, love, love Easter at Mars Hill. We go all
out. A few years ago we had almost 20,000 people show up in the rain to Seahawks
stadium. This year, we are live-streaming from a historic church in downtown Seattle
to all of our other 13 locations, for a total of 42 services spread across four states. We
go big for Easter, and its all about evangelism, conversions, and baptisms. The
sermon is short and focused on evangelism. We do not o er kids ministry but invite
all of the kids to join us in service, which makes it fun and allows us to stack up more
services closer together, as the turnover is faster. We sing a lot, everyone on stage
dresses up, and we dunk people and cheer all day. Its nuts in a glorious way. Even
when we were a church of 100, we have always sought to outpunch our weight class
on Easter and go big.

PRUNING AND PLANTING

After Easter, we continue to roll along. Attendance attens out through the spring,
and summer is a time to prune and plant. We do all of our sta and elder
performance reviews at this time. We nish our scal year and reset all of our
budgets. We change up programming. This is the best time of year for new leaders to
be put in place, so that they can ramp up in time for the fall push. We plan for the fall
push and line out the entire next year.

Most sta takes their vacation sometime during the summer, and I tend to take a
break from the pulpit. For 16 years, Ive preached a lot. The rst decade I preached on
average about 50 weeks each year, or close to that. In more recent years I am down
to 45 or so. Ive never taken an extended break of more than a few weeks since 1995
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9/24/2017 How to plan a preaching schedule | Pastor Mark Driscoll

when we were in core phase.

Summer is the best time to put new leaders in place.

When I am out, other Mars Hill pastors generally cover our services by preaching live.
This summer, however, Im getting six weeks o , which is a really long time for me. I
want our other pastors to get a summer break as well, however, as we work hard at
Mars Hill, so Im bringing in some friends to preach a series called My Best Sermon
Ever. Im asking each one to choose what they think is their best sermon and preach it
for us. We have Wayne Grudem, Paul Tripp, Larry Osborne, Eric Mason, and Bruce
Ware con rmed for this summer. They will make an amazing deposit in the people of
Mars Hill. I should have done something like this, inviting other pastors to invest in our
people, years ago.

COME & SEE VS. GO & DIE

Come & See series are intended to bring people in to the church. These are series
that hit a felt need, controversy, or have a major evangelistic thrust. Real Marriage, for
example, was the biggest Come & See series Ive ever done. Lots and lots of new
people came to the church, and tons of people became Christians.

Go & Die series are intended to mature the people in the church. These are series
with a big call to repentance, life change, and aligning your life with Jesus mission
through the church. The Seven is an example of a Go & Die series. Another example
would be Jesus Loves His Church, which I did after the huge attendance increase of
Real Marriage, as we had thousands of new people who needed to know what a
church was and why we do things like preaching, baptism, Communion, small groups,
and giving, and why we have leaders like elders and deacons.

Come & See series bring people in. Go & Die series mature people.

A church that only does Come & See series sacri ces size for depth. A church that
only does Go & Die series sacri ces depth for size.

As a general rule I prefer to have the big Come & See major campaign start in
January or February, last two to three months, and then spend the rest of the year
doing Go & Die minor campaigns. Basically, we catch the sh early in the year and
clean them the rest of the year.

SERIES LENGTH
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9/24/2017
SERIES LENGTH
How to plan a preaching schedule | Pastor Mark Driscoll

Some friends of mine who are gifted preachers prefer shorter series for the sake of
newness and momentum. Without disparaging that approach, I opt for longer series
and longer sermons (an hour plus is normal for me).

I nd that people have an appetite for whatever you feed them. If they get books of
the Bible, longer series, and longer sermons as their steady diet, they grow
accustomed to it and develop and appetite for those things. I do some topical series,
but I really like to teach through books of the Bible, which means the length of a
series depends on the length of the book. So I have no standard length for my series,
but I try to nd books of the Bible that t into the annual seasonal rhythms.

THE BEST SUNDAYS TO TAKE OFF

There are a handful of Sundays that most preachers in the U.S. can take o without
hurting momentum at all. These include:

1. The rst Sunday of the year, if its close to New Years Day
2. The Sunday after Christmas
3. Memorial Day weekend
4. Spring Daylight Savings weekend
5. Fourth of July weekend
6. Labor Day weekend

HOW TO PREACH A LONG SERIES

Sometimes you will feel compelled to simply preach/teach something, even though

it does not t the annual calendar. To accommodate that you can do one of two
things:

1. Break up a longer book or series into smaller sections. I am doing this with the
book of Acts. It will take me 58 sermons to go through Acts. Rather than
preaching all of them consecutively, over the course of a few years I will preach
from Acts during the seven to 12 weeks following Easter. After a few years, well
have gone through the whole book.
2. Just plow through a longer series or book of the Bible dont worry about making
it t a seasonal pattern. In the past I did this with Genesis (one full year) and
Luke (two full years), and God was gracious to grow our church in depth and
size.

I hope there is some help in all of this. Its a big brain dump for me. A lot goes on in my
mind as I organize my Sunday preachingthere are innumerable variables to
consider. I am praying that, through trial and error, you gure out what works best for
the people and mission Jesus has given you.
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9/24/2017 How to plan a preaching schedule | Pastor Mark Driscoll
the people and mission Jesus has given you.

Got a preaching and teaching question youd like to see Pastor Mark address in future
weeks? Send your questions to preachteach@marshill.com. See all the past topics here.

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