One of the greatest benefits to my ministry over the past six years has been the use of an annual sermon calendar.  Since we launched BridgeWay in February of 2005 I've planned my sermons roughly 9-12 months in advance.  Over the past couple days I've been locked away praying, planning, and writing the skeleton of this year's upcoming sermon series.

While I've tweaked this process several times over the past couple of years.  Here's the basic process I go through to create my annual sermon calendar.

1.  Keep an ongoing list of sermon series ideas. 
* I use Evernote for this. 
* For example, this year some of the series I was considering included:
     - A vision series called "Whatever It Takes"
     - A series on Jesus called "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord"
     - A series on the character of God called "This is Our God"
     - A series on Luke 15 called "People of the 2nd Chance"

2.  Spend time in prayer and fasting.
* I can't overstate the importance of this discipline.
* This year my wife and I have been fasting together as a part of a 21 day Daniel Fast.

3.  Meet with your team.
* I will meet with several staff and leaders prior to my planning retreat and ask several of these questions:
     - What issues or concerns are on people's minds currently?
     - What will people be concerned with between in the next 6-9 months?
     - What theological truths do we need to teach?
     - What spiritual practices do we need to teach?
     - What virtues do we need to teach?
     - What could we harness from culture to communicate these truths?
     - What sermons from other churches have impacted you recently?

4.  Get away for a day or two of planning.
* Typically I'll take a day and a half to get away someplace like Starved Rock State Park.
* Here are a few things that help me in my planning:
     - Spend dedicated time in prayer and meditation to start the day.
     - Block 2 hours blocks of time to work followed by 1/2 hour of rest.
     - Know significant dates (both Christian holy days and secular holidays).
     - Determine how many series blocks you have available.  For example I had 12 series
       & 3 stand alone message blocks available to me.
     - Try to balance series between: outreach, deepening, and balanced teaching.
     - Schedule your outreach series at key growth times (ie...Jan - Easter, and Sept - Oct).

5.  Evaluate and adapt throughout the year.
* I usually feel really good about the plan for the next 4-6 months, but the series that are further out may change as they get closer.  For that reason I do this retreat 2x per year, evaluating and adapting the upcoming 6 months and planning/dreaming about what to preach 6-12 months out.

Here's a look at what this next year looks like at BridgeWay:

February - Mentor Me...investing in what matters most.
March - Lie to Me...religious lies we believe.
April - One Month to Live...a lenten series on how to live with passion and purpose, based on Jesus.
May - The Me I Want to Be...a series on spiritual growth.
June - Surviving the End of the World...a balanced and biblical series on Revelation.
July - God at the Movies...annual pop culture summer outreach series.
August - Liar, Lunatic, or Lord...an apologetics series on Jesus.
September - People of the Second Chance...a BridgeWay culture series on Luke 15.
October - Whatever it Takes...a vision series for 2012.
November - Overcoming...a series on the theme of overcoming.
December - This is Our God...a series on the character of God.

So that's my process...what's yours?

It's the end of the year and I'm doing some evaluation of my life action plan, life goals, and life in general.  As a part of the process I'm evaluating my writing and blogging patterns and topics.  Here's my top 10 posts from the past year...interestingly 3 of them are older than one year old.

1. iPad vs Rock 
(I had to eat my words on this one after I bought an iPad mid-year...I love it by the way)

2. Preaching from an iPad 
(Lots of search engine traffic for this post...interestingly, I still find I prefer paper)

3. Can a Christian Get a Tattoo?
(Another often searched for topic)

4. Invictus Leadership Lessons
(I still get quite a bit of traffic from this post)

5. About Me
(This is why every blog needs an "About" link in a prominent location)

6. Easter Egg Drop Pictures
(Most of the hits are from other churches considering similar events...neat stuff)

7. Anti-Psalm 23
(I love this unusual piece, and it's hard to find on the net so I posted it here...lots of search traffic...a post from 2 years ago that still has staying power)

8. Coaching
(I get several contacts for coaching because of this one simple link)

9. What Does the Bible Say about Dating?
(Part of our annual Q&A series...like the post about Tattoos...still get a lot of traffic on this one)

10. How to Deal with Opposition?
(A post from over 2 year ago that still gets lots of search engine traffic)

In the past I've used my blog to communicate with BridgeWay quite a bit (and I think I still will do that), but I'm thinking I might shift the content slightly to be more focused on content that applies in a broader context.

ESPN is airing the "Jimmy V Classic" tonight and they played back parts of Jimmy's speech from 1993 (he'd recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer).  If you haven't seen it, you need to.  If you have, you probably should watch it again.  It's worth 11 minutes of your time.

I'm convinced that the difference between a good a idea and a great idea is one simple word...execution.

I saw this video the other day and I thought "What a great idea".



If person who made this would have sat on the idea and never executed it.

It would have only been a good idea.

But with execution...it became a great idea.

What good idea has God given you that would become a great idea if you took action and actually executed?

Reason #5 - You Plan to Cannibalize Other Churches


It's bound to happen, you plant a church and new people begin to attend.  Some of them will have little or no church background, while others will come from churches where they are dissatisfied with there experience.  While your church should be open to people who are coming from other churches, if you plan is to build a church for Christians who are dissatisfied with their church, be prepared for them to be dissatisfied with yours before too long.

I've seen several strong churches (100-200 people...some as large as 600 people) close there doors after loosing large (70-80%) numbers of people to the new flavor of the day church plant in the community.  Sorry guys, just seems like pretty bad missiology to me.

Reason #4 - You Do It All Yourself

Okay, so I started this series and called it "5 Bad Reasons to Plant a Church", but the real question my friend asked was, "Give me 5 reasons I shouldn't plant a church?"

Yesterday I posted Bad Reason #1 that people plant churches, and today's follow-up probably should have been Bad Reason #1.

Bad Reason #2 - Because You're Bitter

People plant churches for all kinds of reasons, but one of the worst is because they are planting out of bitterness or because the existing church just doesn't get it (and of course they do).

Often this happens when people become frustrated with the established church and out of bitterness they decide to start something new with people of "get it".  While sometimes their motive is about reaching people disconnected from the church, the danger is that they are driven to prove to the people who don't "get it" that they are/were wrong, and that the planter is/was right.

The problem here is that anything that is birthed out of bitterness, anger, or pride is fighting a loosing battle.  Jesus never promises to bless those type of attitudes.  In fact the work of the Holy Spirit is to eradicate these very things.

I had a friend ask me earlier this week for 5 bad reasons for planting a church.  I shot him a quick e-mail reply, but thought why not post a little bit more on my blog.  So here ya go!

Bad Reason #1 - Because It's Cool

God is doing some amazing things in a lot of different church plants today.  It's easy to look at what Steven Furtick, Perry Noble, Mark Driscoll, Craig Groeschel, or whoever your flavor of the week is and say, "wow, that's cool...I think I want to be like that!"

Problem is that God didn't call you to be Perry, Steven or Mark...He called you to be you!

I'm reminded of the story where David puts on Saul's armor to try to fight the giant Goliath.  He couldn't go in someone else's armor.  He took it off and fought out of his unique gifting.

My advice...take off the false-self you've put on and live the unique calling that God has for you!

Along those lines...here's a sweet video that makes this point really well.

This morning in my message I refered to my Life Action Plan that I created this past November.  I thought I'd post a copy here in case you wanted to download a template you might use to create your own Life Action Plan.

"Therefore, prepare your minds for action..." - 1st Peter 1:13

I was reminded of this passage while watching one of my daughter's soccer practices the other night.  Effective action, requires intentional preparation.

If this is true for the game of soccer, it is certainly true for the game of life.

As a leader one of the principles I operate by to help me prepare myself for action is the principle of 1/3rds.

I try to budget my weekly time in thirds.

1/3rd of my time invested in PREPARING (study, reading, prayer, evaluation, and dreaming)
1/3rd of my time invested in PRODUCING (writing, creating, planning, and building)
1/3rd of my time invested in PEOPLE (counseling, preaching, teaching, teams, and mentoring)

What would happen if you would invest a significant percentage of your time in preparing yourself for action?  If you say you don't have time to prepare, what are you currently saying "yes" to that you need to say "no" to?

It's natural to run away when things get tough.  It's called "survival instinct" or "self-preservation".

It's what caused men to jump in lifeboats when the Titanic sunk, leaving behind woman and children to die.

It's what causes trained bullfighters to jump out of a ring when attacked.


It's what causes leaders to run from conflict and ignore difficult situations.

Running is a natural response to pressure.

It takes a supernatural response to lead and learn when the pressure gets turned up.

Listen to these words from James 1:1-5 in the Message Bible.

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. 

 ^5-8If you don't know what you're doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You'll get his help, and won't be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who "worry their prayers" are like wind-whipped waves. Don't think you're going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.

I received a phone call today from someone wanting to know how to tell if they were really growing spiritually.  Great question!  Here are 3 ways you can tell that you are growing spiritually.


1. Other people take notice. 
Are other people noticing positive changes in your life and attitude?  If so it's a pretty good sign you're growing spiritually.

2. God is speaking to you through Scripture. 
Can you point to specific Scripture that God has been using to discipline you and to change you.
3. When you're under pressure what comes out is more like Jesus and less like you. 

If you think of your life as a sponge, whatever you're full of is what will come out when you're under pressure.  If you're full of yourself, pride, anger, or bitterness that's what will come out.  But if you're full of the Spirit you'll dump the fruit of the Spirit all over people. (strange image I know)



So how about you?  How do you know you're growing spiritually?

I've been reading though the books of 1st & 2nd Timothy as well as Titus as I've been studying leadership development and the role of the minister over the last few days in preparation for some meetings next week.  I've especially been focused on the charge that Paul gave to Timothy (his young protege) in 1st Timothy 1:5 where he writes, "The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith."


This passage hasn't left me alone since I read it 3 days ago, so I came back to it this morning to for some additional study.  What I found is too good to keep to myself.  Paul gives Timothy three sources or foundations for love and leadership:

1) A Pure Heart  
We do not purify our hearts, God does.  It happens as we spend time with him in prayer, confession, reflection, and listening.  I have to stop trying to purify myself and allow God to do that work in me.   
QUESTION: Am I trying to maintain my purity or am I allowing the presence of God to purify me?

2) A Good Conscience  
This is about our relationship with God.  The Greek for "conscience" is all about having nothing to hide from God or others.  I'm convinced when we hide things from God or others leadership and love become an impossibility. 
QUESTION: Am I currently hiding anything from God or others in my life?

3) A Sincere Faith  
The Greek for "sincere" is about not being a hypocrite.  The final source of love and leadership is an authentic desire to know God and to become like Christ.
QUESTION: Am I authentic in my faith or am I playing a part for others?

Take a minute and ask yourself these questions.  Allow God to speak to you.  Obey what He says and just see if it doesn't increase your capacity for love and to lead.

In preparation for Easter there's a ton of activity going down at BridgeWay this week:

• Trailers being loaded.
• Equipment being purchases.
• Volunteers being trained.
• Video being edited.
• Sermons being written.
• Music being practiced.
• Phone calls being made.
• Invitations being given.
• Mailing being sent.

But with all that activity, there's one preparation that matters most.  Prayer.

So along with all these preparations, I'm praying.  I'm praying for you.  I'm praying for your family.  I'm praying for your friends.  I'm praying for your children and grandchildren.  I'm praying for your co-workers and your boss.  I'm praying for your neighbors.

So my question to you is..."How can I pray for you?"

Nearly all of us have heard of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership; but I'm convinced there's 1 thing that leaders must do if they are going to be successful.


So what is it?  Check out Joshua 1:8 and find out for yourself.


Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

So I guess I lied.  It's really 3 Things Leaders Must Do.

1. Know God's Word - what you think means jack compared to what God thinks.
2. Meditate on God's Word - absorb it, let it become a part of who you are, not just information, but transformation.
3. Act on God's Word - have the courage to actually do what it says to do.  Especially the stuff you disagree with.


I'm reading through the Bible chronologically this year, and this was from today's reading.  I'm trying to meditate on God's word daily.  

So how about you...what's your plan?  Are you in scripture daily?  If not I guarantee it's hampering your leadership.

One of the things that I love about BridgeWay is our Leadership Team's commitment to encouraging continued learning for our staff and leaders.  About 4 months ago they recognized the need to encourage next level leaders to lead in the absence of current leaders, and the need to be continually learning from other churches.  So they made the decision to require that once per quarter our staff and department leaders conduct an off-site visit to another church.  This accomplishes two things: 1) it allows them to learn from a perspective outside of the BridgeWay experience, and 2) it forces us to hand off leadership to a next level leader (apprentice leader) who we are mentoring.

This week was my weekend to be out on a site visit.  So my family and our Worship Director (Chuck Kohler and his wife Rhonda) hit the highway to Macomb, IL and checked out The Crossing Church.  The Crossing Church campus in Macomb is a multi-site out of Quincy, IL.  Their campus in Macomb meets in a renovated Thompson's Grocery Store.  I thought I'd share some of my reflections on that experience, as well as some video and pictures from the morning.

The Crossing (Macomb, IL)
 The Crossing site visit from BridgeWay Community Church on Vimeo.
Quick Hit Reflections

• It's clear that the building is an old grocery, but that's not a bad thing.
• Lots of open space in the lobby and worship auditorium.  Open and simple.
• Only one greeter at the door, and they were the only person who recognized us or said a word to us.
• A buzzing lobby full of people.  Chuck said, "At least I knew people went here."
• Not much interaction from volunteers or congregants (you could be in and out and not have anyone talk to you).
• That goes for Children's Registration too.  We got there 10 minutes early and there was no one at the Children's Registration desks, and 5 minutes to the start of the service no teacher in the classroom.  Uncomfortable.
• A very contemporary service, definitely aimed at Christians looking for a contemporary expression.  
• No mention of guests or explaination for unchurched people.  
• The message was pretty churchy (on Revelation and metaphor) and gave me a headache...but made Jesus the hero so that was awesome!  The Pastor/Teacher was very passionate about the message and that helped.  Did I mention this was a video campus?  Really small screens for a video model.
• The Campus Pastor was passionate, personable, and positive...he made me want to be a part of his church...so important.
• I did think it was weird that Chuck and I both walked around freely in the Children's area without having any identification (name badge, parent id sticker, etc...) without anyone asking what we were doing.

What They Do Well

• Over the top fun stuff for kids!  Indoor play-place, fooseball, air hockey, and video games.  My kids would definitely want to come back.
• Great environments (physically).  The worship auditorium, lobby, and children's areas were all very inviting.  Clean, open, and welcoming.
• Worship service flow.  Good flow and sense of worship during the service.
• Quality printed material, and video production.
• Clear next steps in response to the message.  The Campus Pastor did a great job calling people to a response to the message, and giving clear next steps.
• Nice use of imag (image magnification/video).  For a church their size they did their imag well.

What Could They Improve

• Volunteers and and First Impressions at contact points.  Only one greeter in the whole place (with about 300-400 people at the service) seemed really light.  No volunteers at children's check-in/registration, children's classrooms, or at the bookstore made it seem like the place was unstaffed/understaffed.
• Restrooms seemed small for the space and had a funky smell (not all that different than the funky smell in our theater restrooms).
• Pretty rough sound mix.  The sound mix was almost absent and made the room seem dead.  The stage volume was louder than the house volume.
• More instruction for guests or unchurched people.  We received communion, but with little direction or explanation about what it was.  Same thing with a baptism video at the end of the service.  Great video, but no explanation of what baptism is or what it means.

What We Could Learn

• Biggest take-aways for me were the excellent environments they have created that make you anticipate a great experience.
• The use of a simple (and quality) imag system.  With our deep shotgun style theater it would help big time.
• The placement of offering and announcements at the end of worship was great and well done.  I really liked how it helped the flow of the service.
• They renovated the space on a pretty limited budget which is encouraging to me as we look to make a move in the next year or so.

A huge shout out to all our volunteers and leaders at BridgeWay who make our church about so much more than a Lead Pastor's teaching or a Worship Leader's music...you guys make the church!  On my first weekend out for a site visit we had our 2nd highest non-Easter worship attendance ever!  Great job & I can't wait to be back with you all teaching next Sunday!

Had a great time at the Velocity Conference a couple weeks ago with our team from BridgeWay.  One of the highlights was getting to hear Rick Warren speak in the closing session.  It was great to get to hear him speak from his heart for the first 20 minutes or so before he got into his actual presentation.  Pretty much every paragraph the man said was rich with meaning and worth writing down, but here are some of the things that stood out...especially from the opening off the cuff stuff.

• Nothing matters more than the church.
• Few nations that existed 1,000 years ago exist today, but the church has remained.
• 1,000 years from now many nations will cease to exist, but the church will still exist.
• Because the church is so important, we must be all the more HUMBLE.
• The higher you LEAD, the more humility you NEED.
• Do you want to be a church that is a mushroom or an oak tree.  One grows fast, the other grows strong.
• A crowd is not a church.  Move people from the crowd into the committed.
• Churches must move people from "come and see" to "come and die".
• You measure a church by it's SENDING capacity, not its SEATING capacity.
• If you want the anointing of God, you have to get over yourself.
• To lead well, you must build your life on INTEGRITY, HUMILITY, AND GENEROSITY.
• You don't have to be COOL or CLEVER to be a LEADER.
• We're not tempted at our area of weakness, we're tempted in our strengths.
• Humility is not denying your strengths, it's being honest about your weaknesses. 
• If you can learn from anybody, God will honor you.
• We must do what Jesus did, disciple people and release them for ministry.
• Stop worrying about building the church, and start building people.

Great stuff from someone who's living what he teaches.

Reason #5: No Team
Church planting is not an individual sport.  Church planting is a team sport.  Trying to plant a church without a strong team is like trying to make it to the Superbowl with just a quarterback and a middle linebacker (and you thinking you can play both sides of the ball).

I heard someone say recently "The first Reformation gave the people their Bible back...what's it going to take for them to get their ministry back?"  I believe that church planters are uniquely positioned to help people rediscover the joys of ministry.

Too often church planters believe that they have been trained and educated for the work of the ministry, but exactly the opposite is true.  Church planters have been trained and educated for the equipping of people for the work of the ministry.  Please do not plant a church until you've grasped this important difference.  When church planters fail to embrace the need for a strong team of leaders and hoard the ministry to themselves they quickly burn out and become frustrated by the lack of growth in their church.

So how can a church planter ensure that they launch with a strong team?

1. Identify your essential leadership roles.  For us they were: Lead Pastor, Worship Director, Children's Ministry Director, Treasurer, Set-Up Director, Guest Services Director, Cafe Director, and Administrative Assistant.  While we had other roles, and one person filled two roles, these were the essential roles for us at launch. 
2. Don't give away leadership too quickly. Some planters are quick to give away leadership, and slow to remove people.  The opposite should be true.  Take your time in identifying leaders from within your launch team, and place them in a role only after seeing them succeed in less demanding roles.
3. Don't launch until you've got your essential roles staffed.  Just because your launch plan says you're launching on September 13th doesn't mean you should if you still haven't identified a worship director, children's director, or some other key leader.
4. Create an organization chart for 1 year after launch.  If you're planning to be a church of 200+ by the end of your first year then be sure that you create an org chart that will support a congregation of 200.  Then begin to fill in responsible parties for each role, even if you have to have multiple people serve in multipule roles to begin with. This will give you an idea of how many, and what kind of new leaders you will need to be developing during your first year.
5. Don't hire people, use volunteers.  One of the biggest mistakes I see church planters make is to hire people too quickly.  Don't do it.  Resources are tight.  Don't underestimate the power of a highly motivated volunteer.  It is likely someone who is willing to volunteer has a higher intrinsic motivation than someone who will only work if they are paid.  I basically volunteered my time for the first year of BridgeWay as I served as a full-time youth pastor and church planter.  Our worship director volunteered their time.  The only person we paid was a very part-time Administrative Assistant who received I believe $25 per week.
6. Don't underestimate the power of the $100 per week part-time ministry leader.  We'd never be able to accomplish what we do at BridgeWay without several of our staff basically working for a check that covers their mileage too and from the church.  Rather than hire one full-time staff person, consider hiring two to three part-time staff.
7.  When you finally do hire, do it where most needed.  I've heard people say, "You should always hire worship first." or "You should always hire a children's minister first."  I say...your first hire should always be where you need it the most.  We've got a great part-time worship director and would have been foolish to hire a full-time director first.  Our actual first full-time hire was someone who's primary job was to connect people to the church quickly and to equip them for ministry.   Notice the emphasis on someone who would build a stronger team?
8. Value your team.  Write them notes of encouragement.  Spend time with them.  Let them know they are appreciated.
9. Cast vision with your team.  This is a place we made some mistakes early.  I knew about all the cool stories that were happening in the church, but few of our leaders got to hear many of the amazing stories.  Recently, we began to share these stories in team huddles before our services begin on Sundays.  So we meet with our teams and share a powerful story from the prior week.  This helps to connect their ministry to the mission & vision of the church.  It has been powerful.
10.  Provide pastoral care to your leaders.  As a church planter one of your jobs is to provide pastoral care to your leaders so they can do the same for others.  I'm still working on this one myself.

So how about you?  Have you ever seen the power of being on a great team?  How about the weakness of being on a poorly staffed team?