Sermon Series Planning

One of the ways I live out the tension between creativity and strategy in my current role is guiding the Creative Process for our Sermon Series planning at LifePoint. It has taken many forms and tweaks over the years since I have been around it. I often get a lot of questions from folks on how we do our sermon series planning. By no means do we have it all figured out, but just like me, I know others are always looking for fresh, common sense plans to create and accomplish great Sunday experiences. Here is brief outline of the process we currently use:

1. Calendaring: I am always paying attention to the calendar and making sure to keep the need to collaborate and discuss upcoming teaching/series plans with Senior Staff, primarily looking to hear from our Senior Pastor. When we get a couple of months away from a new series launching or the current content plan having a void, I look to setup a Content Planning Meeting with our Teaching Team. Over the years, we have developed sort of a yearly preaching calendar that has typical topics/series we hit at certain times of the year. There is flexibility but it helps initiate frameworks and conversations for plans.

2. Content Planning Meeting: In the content meeting, we cover big picture topics, choosing texts per Sunday, trying to wrestle with key themes that connect week to week, crafting bottom lines when possible, and trying to pull out series branding themes. The attenders for this meeting are made up from our Teaching Team.
3. Creative Meeting: A few days to a week after the Content Planning Meeting, I pull together a team of attenders from our church for a creative meeting. I purposefully use no staff folks. 1. I don’t want people in the meeting thinking “can we do this”. 2. I like a non-staff perspective in our planning and this is the best place to insert our attenders. The meeting usually last about 90 minutes. We keep it upbeat, laid back, relational.  During the meeting, my most important role is guiding conversation, facilitating, asking questions and pulling their ideas together…seeking clarity. Areas of creativity we usually hit: Environment (creativity that extend from the stage), Stage/Set, Music, Takeaways, Bumper/Video Elements, and Other. I use story-boarding techniques to facilitate this meeting.

4. Production Meeting: The Production Meeting is made up of our Worship Programing Team. During this meeting, we are making decisions that come from the Creative Meeting. We begin to make decisions on how to accomplish the ideas we like best. The goal is to walk out of the meeting with specific elements decided upon by the team with buy-in, plus who and when decisions to specific elements per Sunday of the series. I use one of our Creative Boards with the skeleton of our Sunday services down the left as rows and the dates of each Sunday horizontal on the top as columns.

5. Weekly Worship Programming Tactical Meeting: My WP team meets each Tuesday morning for 90 minutes. We cover a wide range of topics but always take 1/3 to 1/2 of the meeting to check-in on services and refine plans. When we are working well, we are finalizing the upcoming Sunday, checking in and confirming two Sundays out, and massaging our creative plans 3 Sundays out. At times, we are only able to look at the coming 1 or 2 Sundays.

For those who are involved in a similar process at their church, I would love to hear the one or two things that work great in your creative process. If you have more questions about any of these steps in process, I am glad to chat more.