I take July each year as a study leave. Let me begin by saying, thank you for that gift of time. I think I am a better pastor and South Main is a better church because I get time away to rest, think, read, pray, and plan. And while the reading, thinking, resting, and praying changes from year to year, the planning has at least one deliverable in common each year: the sermon plan of the next calendar year. Because I was away, we now have sermons planned through Advent, 2025.
The planning really begins long before I leave. Worship planning is very collaborative on our team every week and in every season. In May we took a day together to look back at the past couple of years and to think and pray together about the next year. We name both texts and topics. We try to anticipate what things we might be going through as a congregation and the major issues facing us in the world today. Karl Barth famously said we should preach “with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” Our retreat offers a broader perspective than any one person has. As in everything else in the church, God does more through all of us than through any of us.
So what is the sermon plan and how does it come together? At the simplest level the sermon plan is what texts will be preached in worship each week. To be clear, the sermons are not yet written, but the rhythm of our worship life has a defining shape. To get to that plan I start with the big rocks: Advent, Lent, two window series (for 2025), All Saints Day, Pentecost, and a few more. It helps to have anchor points that shape us year after year. I also think it helps us to look at a single character in Scripture to learn from the life of one of the great saints of old; for 2025 that is Elijah. I also try to balance the texts from three sources: the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament. (I like to think of those as: the Bible that shaped Jesus, the life of Jesus, and what the early Church did with and about Jesus.) I want to make sure we are thinking through our salvation, so in 2025 we’ll study the arc of our redemption as it is laid out in Romans 5-8. I want to address living in difficult times (I am not sure if every time seems difficult while you are in it, or if these are just difficult days, but either way we need Biblical counsel on navigating a troubling world), so we'll look at living our faith from 1 Corinthians 9-11. At South Main we have a unique gift for worship in our Sanctuary, and I want us to claim (or reclaim) the wonder of the windows. This fall and in the spring we’ll bathe in the light (in four-week chunks) of the glorious stained glass. We’ll look at the first four Old Testament windows in September and then at the four gospel windows in January. We’ll repeat that pattern over the next five years, finishing just in time for the church’s 125th anniversary. For Lent we’ll reflect on the things Jesus said from the cross, and in Advent we’ll consider prophetic words from Isaiah and Mark about who the Messiah will be and what His reign will mean, before returning to Luke’s familiar narrative about Jesus’ birth.
All in all, I think the plan balances the breadth of Scripture, key doctrines of the faith, and practical keys for living in a difficult world. Having time to get away to pray and think makes worship better and makes me a better preacher. I do not take lightly that this time is only available because you are a gracious congregation and you value the fruit of that planning. So thank you for the privilege of preaching and serving week by week and for the grace of time to plan effectively for that week-by-week work.
