Q: Is there ever a need to split a series (maybe for a guest speaker)?

A: In most cases I would say no.

Rather than “split” a message series, see if the guest speaker’s message will fit into the series that is scheduled during that time (this may be as simple as changing the title of their message so that it matches the series terminology).

Another option is to utilize your “expansion joints” or open dates on your calendar to shift your series so that the guest speaker can bring a standalone message between two series. For example, move the start of the previous series up a week earlier so that the guest can speak the week after that series ends and before the next begins.

There are some times, however, when God opens up just the right opportunity and none of these techniques will work. In those times, you can hit the “pause” button on a series and consider it a God-inspired audible.

P.S. – Don’t miss the big Church Leader Insights Thanksgiving Sale going on now – click here to see all the deals!

“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”
– Julia Child, Chef

Church Leader Insights is currently running a Big Thanksgiving Sale!

We are offering 50 of my downloadable resources at ridiculously low prices, including many of our most popular downloads (like Starting a Second Service, Managing the Stress of Ministry, and The Journey’s Policy Manual).

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Q: You recommended doing a “full church campaign” in the fall. That just looks like an extra long series on the calendar – can you explain further what is involved in a campaign like this?

A: I do recommend doing a full church campaign each fall. The concept behind the campaign is to take your entire church through the same study and teaching topics at the same time.

It will be a powerful time of spiritual growth for your people and provides a measure of church-wide momentum that is sometimes hard to come by.

During this campaign the Sunday messages and Small Group curriculum are coordinated, and we typically put together a daily devotional for all of our people, so that everyone in the church is learning, stretching and growing in the specific area that we’re focusing on.

For example, this fall we’re going through “The Relationship Principles of Jesus,” so our people are learning how to apply Jesus’ relationship principles in the weekend service, in their small group and in their daily quiet time. It takes planning and work to do a full church campaign, but the resulting life change that we have seen is worth every minute.

P.S. – Two proven full church campaigns that will ramp up the spiritual growth at your church are The New Testament Challenge and Financial Freedom.

“The greatest conflicts are not between two people, but between one person and himself.”
– Garth Brooks, singer

Last week’s “How to Plan Your 2010 Preaching Calendar” Webinars were a great success and I’ve enjoyed hearing from so many of you about how your planning is going.  Here are my answers to more of your frequently asked questions.

Q: Once I have my preaching calendar together, who should I share it with?  Should I share it with other leaders in my church?

A: You want to share the entire preaching calendar with everyone in leadership that it will help to do their jobs.  In other words, you definitely want to share it with your Worship Leader, Pastors on staff, Creative Team, and anyone else you think will find it helpful in doing their job.

Once you have the calendar together, you can intentionally give your people a sneak peek from time to time about something that’s coming up.   For example, in a message where one point is about dealing with relationships, you may want to mention that they don’t want to miss the _________ series that we’re doing in February that’s all about relationships.

There is no reason to make the calendar secretive, but if you place it in the hands of too many different people too early it can become confusing as blanks are filled in, titles are changed, etc.

Q: I noticed that you have 2 open dates/standalone messages planned in the first half of your calendar, but none in the last half of the year?  How many should we aim for?

A: Really this just depends on how the calendar comes together as you’re planning.  For us, as we looked at our Big Days and the timing of holidays and special weekends, it just so happened that we filled in each week from June through the end of the year.  There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to how many open dates.

The goal in planning the preaching calendar is to seek God’s will about what to teach and when to teach it, and sometimes as you go through that process there will be weeks that just don’t seem to fall into place.  Those are good to leave as standalone messages.

Also, you may consider the weekends before your Big Days (most notably Easter) to be standalone weekends where you can specifically teach about and challenge your people to invite their friends the following week.

P.S.- If you missed the “How to Plan Your 2010 Preaching Calendar” Webinar, you can listen to a replay of the audio at: www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com/preachingreplay

Welcome to the final post of my six-part blog series, “Igniting Growth In Your Church.” I trust that this weekly series has taken you to a new level in your understanding of how to keep your church’s evangelism temperature at the boiling point. If you haven’t already, make sure you pick up my new book, Ignite: How To Spark Immediate Growth In Your Church to keep digging even deeper into the truths of effective evangelism.

Last week, we talked about how to pinpoint your best fields for promotion. This week, we are going to shift gears a little and talk about one of the most critical pieces of evangelism – how you can prepare for people to say “yes!” to God and how to follow up with them when they do.

Today’s Topic:

Preservation: Preparing For And Following Up With People Who Say “Yes!”

PREPARATION

In addition to inviting people to say yes to God through our various evangelistic efforts, we have to prepare for them to say yes. God will not draw people to Himself in your church unless you are prepared.

Why would God cause people to accept His invitation of salvation under your care, if you aren’t ready to receive them and start shepherding them toward becoming fully developing followers of Jesus?

Preparing for people to say yes to God is actually more an assimilation discussion than an evangelism one. The process of clearing the way for them to meet God in a personal way begins the minute they decide to visit your church for the first time.

The Assimilation System that I detail in Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests Into Fully-Engaged Members Of Your Church outlines the process for making sure a first-time attender comes back again and again until they are ready to accept Jesus’ invitation of salvation, join your church and become fully-developing followers of Christ.

FOLLOW UP

Following up with new believers is a very important task for any pastor. Our faithfulness with the few will prove our trustworthiness with the many. (Hey, that sounds like something Jesus said one time!)  While each church must wrestle with their own new believer process, the goal is to be clear and intentional. Ask yourself these questions:

• What do you want a new believer to do in the first hour after becoming a follower of Jesus? At The Journey, we invite them to check the box on their connection card, so we are aware of their decision. Other churches invite them to come forward during an invitation time. I’m not against come forward invitations. If you use them, just make sure you also have a way for those who are so introverted they will never come forward to register a decision within the first hour.
• What do you want a new believer to receive within one day of becoming a follower of Jesus? For us, it’s a personal email, with the link to the online bible study.
• What do you want a new believer to do within one week of becoming a follower of Jesus? We want to put a new believer’s book in their hand to help them start growing in their faith.
• What steps do we want a new believer to take in the first month? At The Journey, the answer is baptism. What’s the answer for your church?
• What’s the future plan of discipleship for a new believer? For us, it’s connecting them into a small group and normalizing their church attendance.

There’s no such thing as a perfect new believer process, but do everything you can to insure that the new “babe in Christ” that God has entrusted to you has the best chance to grow!

God has big dreams for your church. Bigger than you can imagine. And He has called you to do the work. As you do, He will add His Spirit to your efforts.

My prayer for you is that you will latch into and implement all that we’ve discussed here over the last six weeks. Make sure to pick up Ignite: How To Spark Immediate Growth In Your Church and keep going deeper in your study. You may also want to check out my popular resource, “The Evangelism System.” Just click here.

Make the changes that need to be made in your church. Mobilize your people for evangelism. Keep the evangelistic temperature boiling hot. And then give God the praise as He sends you the harvest.

- Nelson

P.S. If you’re ready to build a New Believer Follow-Up System to make sure that no new believer slips through the cracks at your church, check out The New Believer Seminar!

P.P.S – If you missed any of this blog series, just use the links below to get caught up:
Click here for Week 1.
Click here for Week 2.
Click here for Week 3.
Click here for Week 4.
Click here for Week 5.

Last week’s “How to Plan Your 2010 Preaching Calendar” Webinars were a great success and I’ve enjoyed hearing from so many of you about how your planning is going.  I have also received a number of recurring questions that I’d like to address, starting today, here on the blog.

Q: How far in advance does the preaching calendar planning process need to start?

A: The short answer is as far in advance as you can get started.  As I mentioned at the end of the webinar, planning ahead 6-8 weeks is better than nothing.  However, you’re typically going to be wrapping up the past year and looking ahead at this time of year anyway, so I’ve found that November is a great time to get started.

I would encourage you to carve out some time and get to work on planning your preaching calendar as soon as possible.  If you have never done it before and you saturate the planning process with prayer and fasting, you will be amazed at how clearly 2010 will begin to come into focus as you plan.

Q: You mentioned collecting ideas from your congregation about sermon topics for the next year.  Do you leave it open ended or have a list of topics for them to pick?

A: Like I said in the webinar, I’m not sure you want to solicit ideas from everyone who attends your church (unless you can clearly explain it), but you may ask for ideas from members, small group leaders and other key leaders.  I would place this type of input in the early “information gathering” phase of planning your preaching calendar, so it will probably be pretty open ended.

This information combined with the topics your teaching team comes up with is a great starting point, but again, you definitely want to hear from God on what to include in the upcoming year and what to hold off on for the time being (and be sure to save all topics that may work at a later time).

Q: I’m a church planter, where do I start? My leadership team is all volunteer and aren’t “pastors”, do I still give them the full weight that you are giving your team to help create series?

A: Early on in your church plant (especially if you’re the only teaching pastor), planning your preaching calendar can seem like a massive undertaking – no “teaching team,” limited time to work on it, etc. – but let me encourage you to make the time to pray, fast and plan out your preaching in advance.  You can still collect ideas from others, but the bulk of the responsibility for putting together the preaching calendar will fall on you.

However, by planning ahead you will be able to 1) involve more people in the creative process, 2) be more strategic about your Big Days & when to address specific topics, and 3) be more intentional with your promotional efforts.  On top of all that, you will be able to lower your stress by knowing far in advance what messages you will need to prepare.

Q: Did you state that you plan your preaching calendar with your staff?

A: If you have multiple teaching pastors on staff, they are a natural preaching calendar planning team.  Each person has a vested interest in the preaching calendar and will bring valuable ideas to the table – both about what series to include and how to best approach them.

Involve the people that you believe will be helpful to the process.  You are certainly free to include others (beyond the teaching team) in the planning process, but no matter who is involved, remember that the ultimate responsibility of the preaching calendar belongs to the Senior Pastor.

P.S.- If you missed the “How to Plan Your 2010 Preaching Calendar” Webinar, you can listen to a replay of the audio at: www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com/preachingreplay

P.P.S. – For a set of resources that will upgrade all aspects of your Worship Planning, check out The Worship Planning Premium Package.

Thanks so much to the almost 2,000 of you who joined me last week to walk through the 2010 calendar in my “How to Plan Your 2010 Preaching Calendar” Webinars.

Whether you were able to be a part of the webinars or not, I’m giving you another chance to listen.

We have set up a special page where you can listen to an audio replay of one of the webinars from last week.

It doesn’t include my slides or the bonus resources that I gave to everyone who joined me in the live webinars, but you can get all of the content from the audio to help you plan your 2010 Preaching Calendar!

You can listen at:

www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com/preachingreplay

Also, I’ll be posting some of the frequently asked Preaching Calendar Questions from the webinars here on the blog later this week.

P.S. Feel free to share this post with anyone who might find it helpful.  I am excited to see and hear about all that God is going to do in and through our churches in 2010.  Thanks again for your support!

“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe, Writer