[00:00:00] Whatever Your Planning rhythm is, Jason's is a couple of months out from a series, floating the idea. But it's one of those things and we say this a lot, what get scheduled is what gets done.
[00:00:11] And if you don't have it like a placeholder for the conversation, you may never have it. And so for us, the 631 discipline, and you could adapt it in all kinds of ways, forces us to visit the things that we're going to be doing before we get there.
[00:00:26] Welcome to episode 350. Do you sometimes wonder how to plan Sunday mornings or seasons of the church a few weeks or months out? It's tough when you feel your trapped by the everyday grind, but it may not be as complicated as you think.
[00:00:41] Three Ways To Strengthen Your Planning, that's today on the Reclaim Leader. Hey everyone welcome to the Reclaim Leader Podcast. Two pastors talk and shop about eating change in their churches. I'm Jason Tucker back again with Jesse Skiffington 4. Drumroll, please episode number 350. 350, dude. Have we figured it out yet?
[00:01:11] Oh no. We're about to leave change in the local church here. Jason, I don't know. And you know, it's like this is a kind of thing podcast or celebrate and I don't know.
[00:01:20] I got my schmedium shirt on, which I didn't realize was a schmedium until I got it on. What's the house this morning? Yes, this baby is a little tight and it's clearly because I've been working out. I know you can tell Jesse.
[00:01:34] But yeah, I mean there's no real fanfare other than we're just continuing to try to figure out how to be faithful to God's call upon our lives as pastors, how to help lead healthy and faithful churches and it's a big dang mess.
[00:01:51] There's lots of good things and hard things about it for sure. Yeah, here we are. We're still doing it. We're still working hard at it. I've got my VBS T shirt on.
[00:02:00] It's VBS week here in real time at Marine View and you know, it just churches an amazing beautiful, fun life-giving thing but it's also a lot of work and sometimes we look up actually the past couple weeks just kind of having the chance to reflect and gone, you
[00:02:16] know, we made a lot of progress but there's still so many things to work on, to really move toward that, a flourishing church that makes disciples that really is moving the needle for the kingdom and I think sometimes when you're, you know, the senior pastor or your
[00:02:32] in leadership and the church, you see so much of the mess and the things that need to improve and get better. I just we have to stop and celebrate and remember that God is at work and making an impact
[00:02:43] through our churches and look how far we've come and so I kind of had one of those times this past couple weeks where I was like, look how far we've come and you kind of need to stop and do that sometimes otherwise you can get discouraged.
[00:02:55] Absolutely, by the way, let me see that shirt you're working with there. What's that VBS shirt going on? Oh, you did this, you bet. Yeah, so group, you know, coming back, diving to friendship with God is the VBS theme this week. So I love it. I love it.
[00:03:08] We do have the same as we were able to. Yeah, to plan ahead and think ahead we're actually doing our first VBS celebration Sunday where Sunday morning following the VBS is going to be at day six of VBS essentially but for the whole church to participate in.
[00:03:24] So we're going to see how that goes. I don't know, we're going to find out what we're excited about it. If it works, let's talk about it because we've tried all sorts of things to wrap up
[00:03:34] VBS and include more of the families that are there and everything and honestly, we haven't had much traction. Yeah. We get this figured out or maybe our listeners, listen, pastors, if you got it figured out, shoot us an email because we'd love to hear some ideas.
[00:03:49] Yeah, I mean, this is off topic a little bit but art, you know, we've tried some things too and they haven't always hit and I think this is the year where we decided that we're going to do it. We have to go all in.
[00:04:00] You can't tip toe into VBS celebration Sunday and sort of have a VBS highlight video and maybe have a few kids come up front to do some motions to the songs. It's got to be full on.
[00:04:10] So this is either going to be a home run or a colossal swing and missed. I don't know. I'll let you know what's getting. I am putting my money down on home run.
[00:04:19] So let's say it's one of those things when we first started talking about it and thinking and dreaming about it, I was like that one that sounds like a lot of work which tells
[00:04:27] you what season of ministry I'm in more than like, oh, that just makes me tired to think about. And then too, it's like, you know, a little bit your credibility's on the line when you take a big swing.
[00:04:37] So we kind of make sure a little nervous about what it might do for momentum but thinking about all the effort that our team has put into this week and this weekend, I'm excited to see what happens.
[00:04:47] And that kind of thing can only happen though when we're planning far enough ahead to do it at a credible level and we kind of talked last week about kind of the big picture of why planning matters. Why do we want to be further out?
[00:05:00] Why does planning a season or two ahead? A mid-range plan. And we're talking about the event and program life of the church. Not our strategic planning sessions where we're thinking vision and mission, we're talking
[00:05:10] about the implemented planning life of the church in our programs and our events and our sermon series, that kind of stuff. And we're just talking about how the credibility and momentum that can come when you're planning further ahead and you have things ready to go.
[00:05:26] I dizzy it right here at room for creativity. You sort of tracks well with people that are going, oh, these people sort of have their act together, they're getting things out ahead of time.
[00:05:36] And it prevents us as we land in last time from chasing ideas last minute or kind of chasing you know, oh, that sounds great. Let's try that and it kind of comes off half-baked. So last time we talked about the why of planning.
[00:05:49] And hopefully we can all understand something about it and we've been around organizations that plan ahead well and others that don't, we kind of get all that. But how do we actually do it? And that's where we're going to focus our time today.
[00:06:02] And I don't have this figured out by any means. I know you guys, it's a work and progress for you all all the time. But we have found some things that work well for us that are always in constant
[00:06:11] need of revitalization or improvement or coming back to the basics again. But they can really strengthen the way that our mid-range planning sets us up for success. So we're going to talk about three ways to strengthen your mid-range planning process
[00:06:28] by kind of rolling it into the normal rhythms of what you're doing all the time anyway. And just getting a little further out on that and allowing it to kind of be it. To for those planning things that are going to happen anyway, to become catalysts
[00:06:40] for a little bit longer, that mid-range seasonal planning. So that's where we're going to go. I hope that makes sense. What we're going to be doing today. No, yeah. It does and it's so important. I actually think this is the secret sauce to making change in your life.
[00:06:54] And I think it's the secret sauce to discipleship as well. It's how do I incorporate whatever goal or plan that I have and fit it into what I'm already doing?
[00:07:06] Because I think the big misconception is I've got to make all this space in my life for this new thing. And I've got to just attack at 1,000 percent. And that's why New Year's resolutions don't work because that's that.
[00:07:18] It's how do you fit it into what you're already doing in a way that's sustainable? That's really the secret sauce to get it. Really. Some collaborate talking about that. Yeah, and I think that's exactly it. So I'm going to share some of the things we do in Jason,
[00:07:32] not pop in with some of the things they do. But be thinking about your church, your rhythms, what would work in it? Kind of taking what you're already doing in adapting or adding to it.
[00:07:43] And I'm with you sometimes if we go to a conference or something and we hear about it tool or a way of doing something that doesn't fit with our personality or with our rhythm or whatever and we try and force it in.
[00:07:54] And it doesn't stick because it's not natural for us or it's like trying to do a news resolution like you said, you start off really strong and then it just goes by the wayside.
[00:08:04] So I want to introduce three ideas that can I think we can fold into what are probably already natural rhythms in the life of our church, whether we're a big church or a small church
[00:08:15] and can set us up for six sets of kind of strength and that mid-range planning and that we can begin to slowly gradually grow kind of the timeline for our planning to to be even healthier.
[00:08:26] So I just remind you John Wooden, I don't know why John Wooden came to mind for me this week but he said failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
[00:08:35] And so we want to be just we want to honor what God is doing in our midst by preparing in advance and getting ready so that we can have the maximum degree of availability to God for
[00:08:47] what he wants to do in it through us in any given moment or event. So preparing ahead of time actually frees us up to be more present and the things that we're doing anyway. So now I could talk the 50,000 foot level all week long, Jason.
[00:09:01] That's where I love to be but we're actually going to we're going to attempt this and if my any of my staff seems listening they're going to make fun because I have a hard time getting down into the weeds got a drill down get to the ground floor.
[00:09:14] So we're going to try and drive out on time with you. So let's get into three ways to strengthen our mid range planning process with kind of what we call three catalysts and the first one is to take what you're already doing with your planning
[00:09:27] process for weekend services and sermons and use that to grow your mid range planning. So take what you're already doing I hope which is planning for your weekend services in some way
[00:09:40] whether that's a weekly meeting or whatever it is and grow that so that it can help you with your longer range or your kind of near term mid range planning. So what does that even look like what does that mean?
[00:09:52] Well I don't know you guys probably have a staff meeting Jason we have a staff meeting every single week we have at my review kind of a pre-staff meeting with a few key folks where we
[00:10:04] look ahead at our upcoming services that are coming down the road and we typically use a model that we've talked about here before but we call it the 631 model. When we're looking six weeks ahead at what's coming up and by doing that we're actually getting
[00:10:21] a kind of a well-rounded view of what's coming down the road what kinds of things do we want to include or their special elements that we're going to include in the service or
[00:10:29] their key announcements that we need to include in the service what's the sermon topic that week and we're revisiting that and talking about it about a month and a half before that Sunday
[00:10:39] even gets here. So now if there are anything fun we want to do any special items that we're going to plan for we have a six weeks lead time to start drilling down on that. So that's kind of how
[00:10:51] we do it we do a 631 and we'll get into some of the details of that but by using your already existing planning for Sunday services you're going to be better prepared to stay ahead standardized and then ensure some consistent communication. So do you guys do this how do
[00:11:09] you do your Sunday planning on a given staff meeting? Yeah so I would say it's not as dialed in as 631 but I definitely we use the 631 principle to talk about what's coming up and so sometimes
[00:11:25] that's even a longer ramp to get people thinking like what's what's going to happen next I do that often with sermon series because what I like to do is just check the temperature of the series
[00:11:38] with our leadership team. So for example I might say hey I'm thinking on planning to do this series in July and here's why I'm thinking about this series and well it feels like but I'll give you
[00:11:51] I'll make it concrete we did a series on David life a David and I did it because I'm like I don't I've ever done one and all the time I've been here just straight you know life a David
[00:12:04] and it feels like our people are really hungry to increase their just Bible knowledge of important people in the Old Testament and what a great place to start and we had a conversation
[00:12:18] about that. What do you think? Because I wasn't sure I was unsure if that sounded like it would be a peeling or it seemed to fit where people were I just wanted to get checked the temperature and
[00:12:27] it was like oh man I love that that's all what a great idea and we start talking about that and it's not they're just not guessing me to death they tell me when it's you know like yeah
[00:12:38] maybe it feels like people seem to want this or yeah but I was thinking maybe something this and that helps to shape the process and then we check in when we get closer but we do that
[00:12:50] we don't do that in that same meeting I do that online with the people involved in worship like our our production folks and our music folks and you know I send out a title slide
[00:13:01] so you know so they can get that on the rotation for promotion and all of that and we talk about like they get a sermon series description and all of that so yeah it's not quite as dialed in
[00:13:12] where we're 631 but I would say it's the 631 principle. Yeah and I think that's right so whatever you're planning rhythm is Jason's is kind of a couple months out from a series kind of floating the
[00:13:25] idea but it's one of those things and we say this a lot what get scheduled is what gets done and if you don't have it like a placeholder for the conversation you may never have it and so
[00:13:35] for us the 631 discipline and you can adapt it in all kinds of ways forces us to visit the things that we're going to be doing before we get there yeah and I think that's the key thing right
[00:13:46] is whatever you decide your model could look like it you need to have a discipline that forces you to think ahead and so by having the 631 it just we look at the 6 weeks from now thing that's
[00:14:00] going to be happening and we talk about it together which helps us make sure we're not missing any key details if there's a special guest speaker or some special content we want or maybe I'm
[00:14:11] already thinking about a video clip that I want to use it gives our team lots of time to get ready for that and to pull it off well and it jogs our memory about what's coming
[00:14:21] up event wise and that kind of stuff so we'll get into that a little bit more in just a minute too but I want to describe the 631 process at Marine View I think adapt it in whatever way suits
[00:14:32] your world best and and choose something that's going to force you to think ahead of time about what you're going to be doing and however much leave time you want to use for that that's great
[00:14:42] we try to kind of go three months out on a sermon series but then when we get closer 631 is where we go so who it is in our 631 meeting right now it is Larry Kruger who's our worship music
[00:14:56] and creative director it is Andrew Johnson our assistant pastor and depending on the situation one or two other staff members depending on what the needs are for that day so we get together before our full staff meeting for 30 minutes that's all we take on 631 every week we spent 30
[00:15:14] minutes looking at the Sunday service 6 weeks from now the Sunday service 3 weeks from now and the Sunday service coming out this weekend so we're looking at three different Sundays in that 30 minutes and we're doing that every week so you can see that every week it's going to
[00:15:32] march down the line so you're going to have visited each Sunday three times by the time that particular Sunday shows up so 6 weeks out we spend about 5 to 10 minutes usually it's about
[00:15:45] 5 minutes it's high level just bullet point thoughts on what is the theme what is the sermon series what's the basic outline or talking points for the sermon if we have any usually I know this scripture passage enough to say yeah that probably is about and I kind of
[00:16:02] fill in the blank with the few thoughts we were looking at the acts series and this this past time and Paul and Barnabas shake the dust off their feet and so I was like you know what does it mean
[00:16:12] to say hey I tried I'm moving on and how does that apply so you kind of visit some of the things if there's any special elements like you're going to highlight kids ministry or you're
[00:16:23] going to have baptisms or any of that that's a good time to bring those things up and then what are any big announcements that we need be sure happen that Sunday so we don't forget so
[00:16:34] we spend about 5 minutes sometimes if it's the beginning of the series will spend 10 minutes but about 5 minutes of the 631 planning are just looking at the service six weeks for now then we flip the page where it goes a couple of services forward to three weeks ahead of time
[00:16:48] and we do the exact same thing thing this time for 10 to 15 minutes so we spend a little more time at three weeks out really dialing in what's going on so I'm responsible to have a
[00:16:59] more detailed sermon outline by then so Larry can make sure choosing songs and things that fit and pair well with it any unique media element needs like videos or other things we want to use
[00:17:11] need to be decided on by then there's an object lesson we're gonna have decided on it by then hopefully you know this is not always perfect but that's the idea so we can get everything we need
[00:17:23] if there's any special speaker somebody else that guessed or someone that's not usually up front we'll connect with them at three weeks out and say hey here's how the Q&A is going to go that kind of
[00:17:33] thing and then we'll get more detailed about announcements so what are the actual 5 3 to 5 announcements we're gonna do that day so we drill down and that usually is a 10 to 15 minute conversation
[00:17:43] and then the last 10 minutes is just checking in on the week coming up so we meet on Tuesday for the following sub this coming Sunday we'll spend about 10 minutes just checking signals sometimes it doesn't take 10 minutes sometimes it's just 3 minutes but we'll just check signals
[00:17:56] that everything's ready to go for the weekend so anything that we missed anything anybody's not clear about and it sort of has forced us to really get more disciplined about how we're planning
[00:18:08] and by doing that I've noticed that we're able to be more creative more thoughtful and more free to just go into that week ready to go without kind of the panic up what's going to happen
[00:18:20] and have what's it gonna look like so I don't know if that resonates with you Jason but it's sort of the way that we forced ourselves to think ahead by having this 6 3 1 discipline
[00:18:31] absolutely and we do we do the same thing in a little bit different way what we do is we look back and then we look forward so we we review the service that just was we meet on Tuesday mornings
[00:18:44] we review Sunday we talk about any issues or anything like that and then we look ahead and our communications person Suzanne who we've had on the podcast before she's been with us does a great job she will talk about upcoming announcements that she has on her radar
[00:19:02] she is the one who normally does the welcome although she has a team of people that rotate and we talk about it and the reason is the reason it's so important to talk about it is so
[00:19:12] that you make sure listen the people can only hear so many announcements you want to make sure that what you're announcing is really mission critical or it's absolutely critical for you to announce
[00:19:23] and to make sure that it is as efficient a moment in the life of the church as possible and the only way you do that is by talking about it ahead of time because if you have an open
[00:19:34] mic situation I mean God God be with you the open mic situation for announcement time at churches is like here's what it is it makes new people feel like they don't belong yeah and
[00:19:49] then it also kind of like people just tune it out people start you know reading the words to the hymns or you know I don't know like they just kind of zone out yeah
[00:20:02] so and the only way you do that effectively and strategically is you kind of think about you got to talk about it ahead of time so I think that's really important and unfortunately there's a lot
[00:20:10] of churches that aren't in that practice and just running week to week it's going to you're going to hit home run some weeks and do okay other weeks and then it's going to be a train wreck
[00:20:19] other weeks and something like six three when just force in yourself or doing what Jason does before we look back you debrief you look ahead you plan and this is something I also do in my own
[00:20:30] sermon prep so beyond that meeting I'm also on a Friday afternoon I look at six three one for my sermons so I spend 10 15 sometimes 30 minutes on an upcoming sermon on the week that I'm not
[00:20:43] preaching it so that I'm already it's already doing it's already kind of iterating and maturing in my head and my heart and it set me up for success in so many ways where now I'm
[00:20:54] not getting to the week of writing the sermon and half into kind of come with all of that and so doing that in your your sermon process I think is also helpful so pairing that with a
[00:21:06] worship planning and sermon planning and then for us one of the other things we did to just kind of force ourselves to think ahead and to bring things in where we have good
[00:21:19] intentions I hear a lot of times churches will say well we want to do more highlighting of our ministries or featuring this or that but then you know life just kind of gets in the way we forget
[00:21:29] to do it and so we've just built that into the rhythm of our Sunday worship so on the first Sunday the month for us it's communion that's our special element on the second Sunday the month it's a
[00:21:39] ministry highlight from inside the life of the church so it's either a testimony from someone who's been in a community group and encouraging others to participate or something we're celebrating from our kids ministry or something but we highlight one of our internal ministry efforts
[00:21:54] the third Sunday is our that's when we focus on our giving and our volunteering and we talk about hey thank you God would you take these resources plus then we put a special focus on that the third
[00:22:07] Sunday every month and the fourth Sunday is an an external ministry partner highlight so someone we partner with outside in the community a school or an organization and we highlight them
[00:22:17] and so every month for four weeks we already know what the special elements are going to be ahead of time so then it forces us in six to one to go oh what are we doing for our internal ministry highlight
[00:22:29] in August because we know that that's coming up that's a great example and I think what you've done is now it's baked into the recipe so you don't have to you won't forget it because it's
[00:22:40] part of what you do and that's really I think it doesn't just have to be when we're inspired or we happen to hear a story oh we're going to be looking for that all the time because we know
[00:22:48] that every month we're going to do these four things so that's that's part of our planning right there and I think the sixth or the one thing is is really strong and whatever version of that
[00:22:59] is important to implement just to force yourself to be further ahead and I'm going to you're going to be so glad you did it just it just it just allows you to be more successful is what
[00:23:11] it comes down to and so that's one way use what you're already doing to to plan your worship services and use that to strengthen a mid-range planning process by just stretching it out a little bit
[00:23:22] further the second one you've already kind of landed on we know that's been a ton of time on this one but it is leveraging the need for announcements to force longer-term planning so we're going to look ahead
[00:23:34] and be like we in order to be able to announce these things we're going to have to work further ahead and be sure we know what we're doing before we get there and I don't know how many times I've
[00:23:44] then asked on a third day or Friday before a Sunday hey can you please announce film the blank and I don't know if it's a good idea about our DF we haven't planned it or whatever or maybe
[00:23:55] it's something that's been talked about but nobody's followed our steps in order to get a formal announcement and so I'm able to say no that's not how we do it we need to know about the announcement at
[00:24:06] least 10 days before and we need everything for that announcement in the church by Wednesday before the Sunday we're going to announce it so we don't just do last minute announcements and that's not hard rule sometimes especially when it's us as staff that forget that about the process or
[00:24:22] but we had a really good example last week we were getting ready to celebrate the fact that we we did this peanut butter and tuna can tuna fish can fundraising effort we were trying to reach
[00:24:35] 200 of each to support one of our local ministry partners and the person running that kind of the Thursday before came to me and it was like hey can we announce our progress on Sunday
[00:24:46] and because we have this policy I was able to say you know what let's wait until next Sunday because we have this 10 day rule and then this everything needs to be in by Wednesday at midnight
[00:24:55] rule and we didn't get there quite so can we just put it off a week and they appreciated that they understand it and it forces everybody then to adopt a little bit more before looking mentality about our announcements it also allows us to evaluate announcements
[00:25:13] that are these actually for everybody or is this kind of a niche in the church? Are these going to be guessed friendly announcements or are these inside baseball kind of announcements and it just gives us a little more room to communicate effectively and
[00:25:30] thoughtfully instead of just responding to what's coming out of some the moment so I know that's related to we can planning but it's also a little bit different. Yeah I just want to say amen to all of
[00:25:41] that I think we actually have a much stricter policy and that is nobody you know can start there isn't a process it's you go to Suzanne or communication sector we talk about the leadership team so you know this ministry wants an announcement and we say yes or no
[00:25:58] right there I mean it's like no it really is not what we need to do but a little hack and something that works great for us is we have a weekly e-news letter that goes out to our mailing list and so
[00:26:09] we say hey we're not going to do that front but we'll give you a spot in tower talk which is our exactly letter and it's great and we're able to highlight it and what a lot of people found is
[00:26:19] there really was no drop off for example this happens a lot with missions and different sort of like volunteering opportunities after a while there's only so many you can announce without people just you know zoning out but what they found is it really didn't impact their signups
[00:26:37] in an negative way as long as we were able to get them into the tower talk so that's another way to sort of say it's not like we're getting what you're doing yeah because if you're able
[00:26:47] then to say no only these kinds of announcements that apply to most people in the life of the church or at least half of the people or something we're not going to do it and I get we get requests all
[00:26:56] the time for like can we announce our 50th wedding anniversary or someone so as birthdays to they're turning 98 that's incredible shouldn't we announce it so we've also just in the loop before our service we have a scrolling announcements that kind of yeah that's another way
[00:27:11] we just put that stuff up there so hey happy 50th anniversary to the testiers you know congratulations it's not we don't want to be the kind of church that says no we're not going to
[00:27:21] do those kinds of things let's do it in a way that makes sense for everybody yeah whereas if I announce upfront so on so is 50th wedding anniversary 90% of the people don't know who I'm talking
[00:27:31] about and it feels like I guess I'm an outsider or this is strange or then we start getting even more weird requests or you didn't care about my anniversary right you announced theirs but not
[00:27:42] minute we just get into a mess so having using announcements to be thoughtful about what gets in front of the congregation and then forcing people to plan further ahead it creates more of a
[00:27:52] planning kind of mindset for everybody so that one's kind of related so the first two or maybe those are kind of lumped in the same but the last one is something that we do that I don't know
[00:28:03] how everybody else tackles this or how you do it but sort of the church wide communication ahead of the season we like to do like a seasonal preview guide of everything that's coming up as
[00:28:13] much as we have it available at the time so we'll do a fall preview guide it'll go out mid-awkes mid to the third week of August somewhere in there and I'll have the sermon series for the fall
[00:28:24] kind of with our slide hopefully by then and and a little bit of language about what this what the sermon series is about and why it's exciting why you should come why should invite your friends or something and we'll break that down all the way through Christmas time
[00:28:37] and then if there are special events we'll have a calendar for each month in which we which we point out the special events that are coming up when does youth and children's ministry kick off winter when when when's the trunk retreat when's the Christmas
[00:28:50] carol event winter the youth doing their you know they're walking all that stuff will be in there it's kind of a save the date preview guide really it's not a ton of detail but it's just enough
[00:29:01] to say we're thinking of ad we've been forced in our own discipline to plan through another three months to the end of the year four months through the end of the year and it's
[00:29:13] forced us to be disciplined about thinking ahead so we do we call on preview guides and it's just really bullet point information maybe a little letter for me saying hey we're excited for the fall
[00:29:23] can't wait to see it here so it's coming up that kind of thing but again it's another one of those things we want to communicate and we could do it on a month-to-month basis but why not
[00:29:32] spread it out a little bit further and go we're gonna do the whole season which means we have to be thinking all the way through to the end of the year or all the way through to the end of
[00:29:41] Thanksgiving and so it just grows our planning process by enough to do what we think it needs to do which is save dates for people who are planners some people are already planning for summer of
[00:29:53] 2025. I mean we're going to save the dates for everything but it just gives a little bit of a head start for all of us and then once those dates are on there it kind of forces our hand to
[00:30:05] follow through and actually implement all the things all you do is that we talked about so our fall preview guide or winter preview guides spring preview guide they're all there intended to help
[00:30:14] people know what's coming up big picture bullet point save the date style kind of deal and regenerate some excitement people are like oh I can't wait for the Jonah series that sounds amazing
[00:30:24] at you know I'm looking forward to whatever so um that's just another thing that we've used we're already going to be communicating about these things let's just get a little further ahead and stretch stretch that planning process to be able to communicate instead of one month ahead
[00:30:38] let's go three months or four months ahead and make sure people are saving the date. I love what you said about it because it forces you to be organized enough to be planning ahead of time and that's that's the whole point of this in the weeds stuff is
[00:30:53] how do you sort of put it in actual practice you know we talked about planning all the time about how do you actually do it these are the things that you actually do and I think that's good we
[00:31:03] do something similar we don't do it as regular we do a postcard that has all the dates on it yeah and we do it two to three times a year so we'll do one in the fall that goes all the way to
[00:31:12] Christmas it's really like the two it's it's like all of the falls except temperature December and then we do like a January to Easter and then sometimes we'll do a summer one
[00:31:23] if there's some special thing but we live in kind of a beach community so summers a little bit of a different animal but um but yeah it's very similar minimal description just basically save
[00:31:34] the date this is what's coming up so what do you do then because I know a lot of pastors might be thinking hey that's great guys but what happens if you decide to pivot on a sermon series or
[00:31:44] if you decide to change or something doesn't work out you have to change an event how do you handle that when when that happens yeah I drive my staff nuts because I change my mind so that's part
[00:31:58] of the deal you have to be willing to say you know what we had thought about doing this but we're going to do this instead and it's okay I would say be careful not to bait and switch be careful
[00:32:09] to keep your word if you're going to do a Christmas Carol event you should do a Christmas Carol event okay so don't say you're going to do a sermon series about God's love and then do a
[00:32:18] sermon series about hell that you didn't tell anybody about before they showed up with their friends that's right you want to learn about it you know anyway so you get it but I think you need to
[00:32:26] give yourself permission to respond to what God is doing right and so um that's why I try to keep it really general in that preview guide I don't list the titles of all the sermon series
[00:32:37] I used to do that but then I found myself changing the title because I got into the weeds of the sermon and I went you know what is actually not about that it's about this instead it's so
[00:32:46] we try to keep it more general and then we do give ourselves permission to follow you know like where's the Holy Spirit leading us right now so it does just because you put it out there doesn't mean it
[00:32:55] has to be set in stone but I would say don't change it casually because that that can cause problems too sometimes if you are like well then people will be like well it doesn't really matter
[00:33:07] the preview guide because they're going to do whatever they want anyway so something like that but yeah yeah don't don't be afraid to change it if it really needs to be changed and I think it's an important
[00:33:16] important point you just make is we actually talked about it last week when we ended and said I hope people understand we expect the preparation of the Holy Spirit is part a critical part of this
[00:33:28] we're not just doing this on our own but I also want to fight against the notion we don't have to fight with this as press materials because we believe it to our core but that is that
[00:33:38] the Holy Spirit is present in the preparation just as much as he's present in the spontaneity and yes there needs to be a balance of both but really understanding that that preparing is not
[00:33:49] anti-spiritual we believe that the spirit's leading as we do that so when you kind of ballpark some big picture things ahead of time it takes away some of the hard work of deciding in the moment
[00:34:00] of what you're going to do and now you get to be creative about what you've already decided to do and it takes some of that pressure off and I don't know I think there's just something to this
[00:34:09] discipline so if you're a month out planner stretch it to three months see how that goes and if you're two weeks out worship service planner stretch it to six weeks see how that goes and take what you're
[00:34:20] already doing and stretch it use that to strengthen your midterm planning and I think you'll see a lot of dividends come out of that so anyway that's my two cents probably one more on the
[00:34:32] weeds that I feel comfortable even getting that was good for you he's in a good job you know I'm mostly I think our my staff would listen to this thing oh yeah that was
[00:34:41] so what about right you're going to laugh at what we're going to do next week then it's it's all about big picture so it's like back to the comfort zone but no this is this is really important
[00:34:56] and to that end if you're on if you're your church you feel like you're a big picture thinker and you sort of get stuck when it comes to implementation you gotta find those folks in your
[00:35:07] church that speaks spreadsheet you gotta find the the folks who are just really good with details and surround yourself with them so that you can actually put boots to the ground on some of these
[00:35:18] big ideas but I have the six three one notebook Larry takes charge of that well there he go right I got it all in order but we've created the process together I get a dream he gets to record
[00:35:29] we get a work together to make it make it go I love it well hey everyone thanks so much for listening if you will listen we we don't have some sort of big advertising budget I'm sure you
[00:35:41] you couldn't tell but it would be great if you could share this podcast with your colleagues with friends just to get the word out and our goal is really just to help as many churches as possible
[00:35:54] so we do that for us that'd be great and if you have any questions or feedback Jason or Jesse yet reclaim leader dot com and as we say every single time and we mean it every single time
[00:36:04] ministry is hard it is so much better when we do it together