series/teaching schedule planning

The process we go through to plan out the next year’s worth of series/teaching topics for cedar hills church.
1. plan a 2-3 day retreat where we can get away from the office and spend some
time with this planning
2. pray individually & then pray together
3. look at a running list of series/teaching topic ideas that Eric (our lead
pastor) maintains that includes resources that we’ve come up with, resources
from the web, etc.
4. talk through the list, discuss series’ that seem to bubble to the top
a. sometimes we have a tendency to get bogged down in the details of
individual series. At those times we have to bring ourselves back to the big
picture so that we can make the most of our planning time together.
5. write down series’ that seem to have some momentum
6. go through the new list and categorize the series/teaching topics. They
usually end up falling into one of these 5 categories:
a. Christian Living
b. Bible
c. Vision/Values
d. Theology
e. Felt-Need
7. look over the list and determine if we’re missing anything big that should be
taught on during the next year.
8. pencil series onto next year’s calendar. This scheduling is impacted by a
few assumptions:
a. statistically, the biggest days for people who don’t normally, to
attend a church gathering are easter, mother’s day and Christmas
b. the fall is a good time to begin new emphases; people are typically
excited to get back into the rhythm of the school year and have a renewed
passion for church involvement.
9. compile that schedule into an ms excel document


this is a basic outline of how we get the next year's schedule put together. while this functions as our teaching schedule, it is totally flexible based on opportunities and issues that arise, whether a sense of spiritual leading or simple current events.