Planning a Year of Preaching

The anchor comes from the only speech in Acts that Paul gives to Christians, his farewell to the elders of Ephesus at Miletus, and it is the closest thing in the New Testament to a pastor's account of his own ministry. Paul had spent about three years in Ephesus (20:31). He taught publicly and from house to house (20:20). He spoke to Jews and Greeks alike (20:21). He warned each of them, night and day, with tears (20:31). And at the climax of his self-defence he says that he is innocent of the blood of all men, 'For I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole will of God' (20:26-27). The image is from Ezekiel's watchman, who is guilty if he sees the danger and does not give warning (Ezekiel 3:17-21, 33:1-9). A preacher who leaves out what his people need to hear carries some responsibility for what happens to them.

Two words in the verse shape how a preacher should plan. The first is boule, translated will. In Acts it means God's purpose or plan: Jesus was delivered up 'by God's set plan and foreknowledge' (2:23), and his enemies did 'what Your hand and will had decided beforehand would happen' (4:28). So the whole will of God is not a promise that Paul preached on every verse of the Old Testament in three years, which he did not. It is a claim that he set out the whole of God's saving purpose, the creation, the fall, the law, the promises, Christ, the Spirit, the church, the end, and did not leave out any part of it that his hearers needed.

The second word is hypostello, to shrink back or hold back. It is the verb Paul uses for Peter drawing back from eating with Gentiles when certain men came from James (Galatians 2:12), and Hebrews uses it of the one who shrinks back from faith (Hebrews 10:38). In both places the motive is fear. So Paul's claim is not only about coverage. It is about courage. There were parts of God's purpose that would have been unwelcome in Ephesus, and he says he declared them anyway. The temptation he resisted is the one every preacher knows: to preach on what the people like, on what the preacher enjoys, and on what will not cause trouble.

Every preacher and every tradition ends up with what has been called a canon within the canon, the small part of the Bible that actually gets preached. For some it is the gospels and Romans. For some it is the Old Testament narratives of victory and the promises of blessing. For some it is Revelation and the prophets. It almost never forms by decision; it forms by drift, a few favourite books and themes chosen again and again because they are familiar. The result is a congregation that knows some of God's purpose very well and other parts not at all. The rest of this lesson is about how to plan so that drift does not decide what your people hear.

One honest caution before the methods. No method guarantees the whole will of God. A preacher can go verse by verse through a book and never reach its point. A lectionary can carry a congregation through the whole story of Christ every year and still leave out the hard verses. A preacher who chooses week by week can be led by the Spirit to exactly the word that is needed, or by his own preferences to the same ten texts. The method serves the goal. The goal is a congregation that over the years has heard all of what God has said that it needs, including the parts it did not want.

The oldest systematic way of planning is the simplest: take a book of the Bible and preach through it, passage by passage, from the beginning to the end. The Latin name is lectio continua, continuous reading. John Chrysostom, in Antioch and later in Constantinople at the end of the fourth century, preached long series of homilies through Genesis, Matthew, John, Acts and the letters of Paul, many of which survive because they were taken down as he spoke. Augustine preached 124 tractates on the Gospel of John. The method was largely displaced in the medieval West by preaching on the appointed readings for each day, and it returned with the Reformation.

The return has a date. On 1 January 1519, his first Sunday as people's priest at the Grossmunster in Zurich, Huldrych Zwingli announced that instead of preaching on the set readings he would preach through the Gospel of Matthew from the beginning, and he did. Calvin in Geneva preached through whole books, usually New Testament books on Sunday and Old Testament books on weekdays, and from 1549 a secretary named Denis Raguenier took down his sermons as he preached them, which is why so many survive. There is a story often told that when Calvin returned to Geneva in 1541 after three years of exile, he resumed his exposition at the very next verse after the one where he had stopped. Whether or not it happened exactly that way, it shows what the method meant to his heirs: the preacher serves the text in order, and does not choose it to suit himself.

The strengths are real. The preacher cannot avoid the hard passages, because they come up in turn, and the congregation knows he did not go looking for a text to make his point. Each sermon has its context already laid down by the sermons before it, so less time is spent explaining the background. The congregation learns how to read a book of the Bible as a whole, which is something they can then do for themselves. And the preacher is saved the weekly anxiety of deciding what to preach, which frees his time for studying it.

The weaknesses are also real. A series can be far too long. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached on Romans on Friday evenings at Westminster Chapel from 1955 until his retirement in 1968 and reached only chapter 14. Those sermons are treasured, but most congregations, and most preachers, cannot sustain a series of that length, and when the series loses its shape the hearers lose the book. A series in a single book can also leave a congregation in one corner of the Bible for a year or more, which is its own kind of canon within the canon. And a congregation in crisis does not stop needing a particular word because the next verse in Leviticus is due.

A practical guide for most congregations. Choose a book, or a section of a long book, that can be preached in eight to sixteen weeks. Break it into preaching units first, as the lesson Choosing and Bounding the Text described, and count them before you begin, so that you and your people know how long the series will run. Give the series a title and, if you can, a single sentence that sums up the book's message, and say it at the start of each sermon. Long books can be preached in sections across several years: the first twelve chapters of Genesis one year, the story of Abraham another, Joseph a third.

The second way of planning follows the calendar. From very early the church celebrated the resurrection every first day of the week (Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2, Revelation 1:10), and from at least the second century it kept an annual feast of Easter. Over the following centuries a full cycle grew up around it: Advent, preparing for the coming of Christ; Christmas and Epiphany, his birth and his showing to the nations; Lent, a season of repentance leading to Holy Week; Easter; the Ascension; Pentecost; and the long season after it, often called Ordinary Time. Each year the church walks through the life of Christ and the coming of the Spirit.

A lectionary is a list of appointed readings for each Sunday and festival. The Roman Catholic Church issued a new three-year Sunday lectionary in 1969 after the Second Vatican Council, and many Protestant churches adapted it. The most widely used Protestant form, the Revised Common Lectionary, was published in 1992 and is followed by many Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and other churches around the world. It runs on a three-year cycle, with Year A centred on Matthew, Year B on Mark and Year C on Luke, John being read at the major festivals and in parts of every year. Each Sunday normally has an Old Testament reading, a psalm, a reading from the epistles and a gospel reading.

Those who follow the calendar and a lectionary argue for it with real force. It sets the whole story of Christ before the congregation every year, so no church goes a year without hearing of his birth, death, resurrection, ascension and the gift of the Spirit. It protects the people from the preacher, because he cannot preach only his favourite books when the texts are appointed for him. It joins a congregation with millions of other Christians hearing the same scriptures on the same day. And it has deep roots in scripture: Israel's year was ordered by appointed feasts that rehearsed God's saving acts (Exodus 23:14, Leviticus 23), Paul calls Christ 'our Passover lamb' and says 'let us keep the feast' (1 Corinthians 5:7-8), and Romans 14:6 says 'He who observes a special day does so to the Lord.' They read Galatians 4:10 and Colossians 2:16-17 as warnings against returning to the old covenant's calendar, or to pagan observances, as a way of standing right with God, not against a church remembering Christ's own saving acts in order. On this view the Christian year is a good human practice of the kind Romans 14 permits, a way of numbering our days so that we 'may present a heart of wisdom' (Psalm 90:12).

Those who resist the calendar argue with equal force. In the Reformed tradition that runs from the Scottish Reformation through the Puritans, the conviction called the regulative principle holds that the church's worship should include only what scripture commands or clearly warrants, and on that ground the Westminster Assembly's Directory for the Public Worship of God (1645) directed that festival days without warrant in the word of God should not be continued, leaving the Lord's day as the one holy day. Many Baptist, Brethren, Pentecostal and independent churches share the instinct for other reasons. They point out that Paul was alarmed that the Galatians were 'observing special days and months and seasons and years' (Galatians 4:10), that the feasts are called 'a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ' (Colossians 2:17), and that Romans 14:5 leaves the observing of days to each person's conscience, which a church calendar imposes on everyone. They add that a lectionary chooses excerpts, sometimes leaving out verses within a passage, and that critics of the lectionaries have argued that hard texts are among the most often omitted. And in Spirit-led traditions, they ask why a committee's list should decide what the Spirit says to a congregation next Sunday.

This is a real disagreement and this course will not pretend otherwise. Both sides want the same thing, the whole will of God preached to the congregation without the preacher's preferences deciding it, and they differ over whether a calendar is a faithful tool for that or a human tradition laid over it. What a student should take from it is not a verdict but a question for his own context: if your church follows a calendar, what does it leave out, and how will you make sure your people hear it? If your church does not, how will you make sure your people hear the whole story of Christ, including his birth and his ascension and the coming of the Spirit, and not only the parts you prefer?

The third way of planning is the preacher's choice week by week, and it should not be dismissed. Charles Spurgeon, among the most fruitful preachers of the nineteenth century, generally did not preach long series; he chose his text each week, seeking what he believed the Lord would have him say. Many preachers in Pentecostal and independent traditions plan the same way, and the method has the strength that the word can fit the moment exactly. Its danger is the drift described in section 1. A preacher who chooses week by week needs some other safeguard to make sure his people hear all of God's purpose, and the simplest is the one in the next section: keep a record and look at it.

Whatever method your church uses, you can audit it. Take a notebook and keep a page for every sermon you preach: the date, the passage, the main idea, and what kind of text it was. After six months, look at the page. Count how many sermons were from the Old Testament and how many from the New. Count the narratives, the letters, the psalms, the prophets, the gospels, the wisdom books. Notice which major books have never been preached. Then notice which doctrines and which needs have never been touched: suffering, money, work, marriage and singleness, death, the return of Christ, justice for the poor, the holiness of God. The page will show you your canon within the canon in a way your memory will not.

A useful rule of thumb, not a law: over a year, try to preach from both Testaments, from at least one gospel, from at least one letter, from an Old Testament narrative, and from the Psalms or the wisdom books. The Old Testament is three quarters of the Bible and in many churches gets far less than a quarter of the preaching. Over five years, try to have preached from every major kind of text the lesson Preaching What Kind of Text? described, including the hard ones, prophecy and apocalyptic and law.

Here is one shape a year might take for a church that meets every Sunday, adjusted to whatever your tradition does. A series of twelve to fifteen weeks through a New Testament book or a large section of a gospel. A series of eight to twelve weeks through an Old Testament narrative or a prophet. A shorter series of four to six weeks on the Psalms, or on a section of Proverbs, perhaps in a season when attendance is low or people are travelling. A short topical or doctrinal series of four to six weeks on a need in the congregation, such as prayer, suffering or the church, each sermon still preached from one passage. The great festivals, Christmas and Easter at least, if your church keeps them. And several Sundays left deliberately empty.

Those empty Sundays matter. A death in the village, a flood, an election that turns violent, a scandal in the church, a revival among the young people: no plan made in January knows about these. Paul's own plans were redirected; the Holy Spirit prevented him from speaking in Asia, and he only reached Macedonia because of a vision in the night (Acts 16:6-10). 'A man's heart plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps' (Proverbs 16:9). Leave room in your plan, and when something happens that your people must hear the word about, interrupt the series without guilt and come back to it the next week.

Do not plan alone if you can help it. Show your draft plan to an elder, a fellow preacher or a mature member of the congregation and ask what the church needs that is not on it. Tell the congregation what is coming, so that they can read ahead. If you share the preaching with others, plan together, so that one preacher's series and another's do not collide or repeat. A plan known to others also protects you, because it is harder to drift back to your favourite books when the people expect Nehemiah.

Most of the preachers who will read this lesson are not paid to preach. They farm, teach school, drive, trade, nurse, and preach on Sunday, and some preach more than once a week as well. A rhythm that assumes twenty hours of study is useless to them. What matters is not the number of hours but that the work is spread across the week, because a sermon begun on Saturday night has had no time to mature, and the mind keeps working on a passage it has met early in the week even while the hands do other work.

Here is a rhythm that can be kept in a few hours a week, built on the steps this track has taught. On Sunday evening or Monday, read next week's passage several times and write down what you notice and what puzzles you, as the lesson Exegesis for the Pulpit described; then let it sit. On Tuesday or Wednesday, do the exegetical work with free tools, Blue Letter Bible or STEP Bible, for an hour, and try to write the main idea of the passage in a single sentence. On Thursday, write the sermon's main idea, the need it meets and how it points to Christ, and sketch its movements. On Friday, write the notes or manuscript, with the introduction and conclusion. On Saturday, preach it aloud at least once and pray for the hearers by name in your own heart. On Sunday, preach it, and then rest.

Some practical helps. Keep the passage on a small card or in your phone and read it in spare moments through the week: on the bus, in the queue, at lunch. Keep a notebook or a phone note for illustrations and observations as they come to you, so that you are not searching for them on Saturday. If you preach a long series, read the whole book several times before you start, and do the background study once, at the start, rather than every week. If you preach more than once a week, do not try to prepare two new sermons at the same depth; let one be a fully prepared sermon and the other a shorter exposition or a Bible study, or preach from the same passage at both.

Rest is part of the rhythm, not a reward at the end of it. Jesus took his disciples away to rest when they 'did not even have time to eat' (Mark 6:31), and Jethro told Moses, 'Surely you and these people with you will wear yourselves out, because the task is too heavy for you' (Exodus 18:18). A preacher who never stops will in time have nothing to say. Take one day in the week when you do not prepare, and if you possibly can, share the pulpit with others so that you are not preaching every Sunday of the year. Training others to preach is itself obedience: Paul told Timothy to entrust what he had heard 'to faithful men who will be qualified to teach others as well' (2 Timothy 2:2).

Your practical step this week. Open your notebook to a fresh double page and make a calendar of the next twelve months, one line for each Sunday. Mark first the Sundays you know you will not preach, and the festivals your church keeps. Then write in the series you will preach, with the book and the number of weeks, keeping at least one long series in each Testament and leaving four to six Sundays empty. Put the passage for your own sermon from this track in its place. Then turn the page and write the weekly rhythm from this section, adjusted to your own working week, with the day and the time you will do each step. Show both pages to one person you trust and ask what is missing.