Every summer the church allows me to take a week away from the office in order to develop sermon series outlines for the next 18 - 24 months. I thought those of you who are pastors or lay leaders of other churches might find it helpful to know how this process works.

Four weeks out I send an e-mail to the entire congregation inviting them to pray and then share with me their pastoral concerns, theological questions, spiritual yearnings and ideas for sermons that they believe their unchurched friends might be interested in. In response to that e-mail this year over 50 people sent their comments with a total of more than 120 sermon series ideas.

About the same time I invited our entire staff and our leaders to share with me, as those working most closely with our people in their ministry areas, their thoughts on what types of sermons are most needed by our congregation members. Our staff submitted another 120+ ideas this year. So, I took with me on retreat 240+ sermon series ideas - about 30 years worth of ideas.

I brought all of this information with me to Colorado, along with my Bible, and a handful of books on a variety of topics (this year it included two books on preaching, a commentary on the Book of Genesis, Kinnaman’s unChristian about why young adults are opting out of church, Mancini’s Church Unique, about mission and vision and leadership, and several others). Each day I would hike up the mountain, praying, singing, or just listening. I would read, study, reflect, pray and read some more. And in the midst of this ideas would begin to flow. I wrote them down and came back to them latter to reflect upon them. About 5:00 each day I would stop work and spend the evening with LaVon, and we would talk about the ideas and just enjoy some rest and recreation. After she went to bed, I would spend time reading.

After a couple of days the 240 sermon series ideas had been whittled down to 52, and I sent these 52 to three of our senior staff to give their initial feedback. Latter this was whittled down to 20 series that are part of the plan for the next 30 months.

There were three key questions I came back to again and again. The first was a prayer, “Lord, what do you want to say to your people over the next two years?” The second was, “Which of these series will best help our church to fulfill our mission of building a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians?” The third question was, “What do the people of the church need to help them grow in their faith, to be spiritually healthy, and to equip them to serve God as committed disciples of Jesus Christ?”

I spent the day today (Friday) with members of our worship planning team sharing with them the proposed plan, praying over it, and inviting their feedback, ideas and push back. Tomorrow we’ll begin brainstorming how we might design worship and preaching in such a way that both the sermon and the worship service fit together and help our congregation grow.

The sermon series that are planned for the next 12 months will be set at this retreat, though it is not uncommon to drop or change one of the series in the next year. The sermon ideas for the following 12 months - from summer 2009 to summer 2010, are not as firm. We’ll revisit these ideas next summer and it is likely that half of them will change.

In the next post I’ll give you a preview of the sermon plan for through 2009.