paulpetersonlive.com

Today the Management Team hung out @ Vern’s house and worked for several hours on worship planning.

Let me explain our process for planning out each service…

- Last July we went on a two day retreat to plan out our preaching calendar.

- Before we went we asked the congregation to fill out a bulletin insert which said, “I would
like to hear a sermon, or a series of sermons on .”

- I also asked the Management Team to spend time in prayer asking God, “What do you
want to say to Northgate over the next year?”

- Then we did a five year study of our attendance patterns and noticed certain trends:
there are high points (e.g. Easter); balance points (e.g. Febuary - June); and low points
(e.g. summer).

- We identified three types of sermon series: Attract (what will draw
unchurched/unsaved people?); Grow (what does every Christian need to hear to
grow?); and Balance (what are those things that we must talk about but wouldn’t talk
about on Easter - e.g. the church’s position on homosexuality).

- At the retreat it was amazing to hear the similarities between what the church asked to
hear about and what the pastors felt like God was saying to us. After we determined our
topics we began planning our preaching calendar.

- We planned our preaching calendar like this: When we have the most people (e.g.
Easter) we will preach attract sermons (e.g. how to have a better marriage); When our
attendance is steady we will preach grow sermons (e.g. a series on holiness or
evangelism); when our attendance is low (e.g. summer) we will preach balance
sermons (e.g. what the bible says about the Trinity).

See, here’s the thing… we are very intentional about what we preach and when we preach it.

Do we ever change our plans? Yes! Today we changed our Easter series… but it’s still an “Attract” series! We’re calling it “Shattered… He’s Not Who You Thought He Was.”

We’re going to bust up the old paradigm of Jesus and go back to the gospels to present a fresh, biblical portrait of the Son of God. Our target audience? The unsaved/unchurched who will be making their once a year appearance at church! I want them to come back and we’re going to do everything in our power, without violating Scripture, to get them back here! We have something to say and we want the unsaved/unchurched to hear it!

So, there’s how we plan out sermons!

And just in case you’re wondering… we have nailed down the “Big idea” for each week through the end of May! That means we can be working on our sermons for months instead of days! HURRAY!