I want to spend some time this week talking about planning a preaching calendar.

I believe the first thing a person should do when planning their preaching calendar (besides prayer) is looking at the calendar.

There’s several things you need to know so you can maximize the calendar:

– What are the natural high days (Easter, Mother’s Day, etc…)? Easter changes every year, so if you want to start a series of teachings on Easter, find out the date and then decide how long that series is going to be? I almost always start a series on Easter and end it the week before Mother’s Day (Unless Easter comes really early). This year, there’s 5 weeks separating the 2.

– What are the natural low days? Low attendance days are usually: the 1st Sunday of the year, Spring Break week, Memorial Day weekend, July 4th weekend, Labor Day weekend, the Sunday after Thanksgiving (which is the lowest attended Sunday in America), and the last Sunday of the year. I try to plan my breaks around a few of those weeks. I’m not going to teach 52 weeks a year, so plan to be out on some of the Sundays when much of your congregation is out.

If you’re going to plan an effective preaching calendar, you can either compete with the calendar or you can maximize it. Tomorrow I’ll share a few thoughts on balancing your calendar…