Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash

Recently, I had several (separate) conversations with guys my age where I talked about some of the dreams Katie and I have and some of the prayers we are praying about our future. As our kids continue to grow, we are asking God how to launch them best, what pastoral ministry as empty nesters look like, and for him to give us clarity about pastoral ministry in our 50s and beyond.

Why?

So much life is ahead of us; we don’t want to miss all God has for us. What you do today and your decisions impact where you are in a decade or two.

When I shared this, they responded, “I can’t remember the last time I dreamed.”

It is easy to dream in your teens and 20s but harder in your 40s and 50s.
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It makes sense. Life is busy and hard as we age. Cynicism starts to creep in, and we begin to think, “This is all there is.” 

I talk to many people in midlife who feel stuck or like their life has grown stale. Some of it is because of past decisions, but we often stop believing that God has things for us in the future. We start to think our best days are behind us. 

Why do we feel this way? Many of us are tired. We have less energy as we age, and it is hard to push ourselves. We have tried many things that didn’t work or go as planned, so there is a sense that we shouldn’t get our hopes up. 

Too often, though, people in midlife quit things. They quit relationships, marriages, careers, or faith because of their lack of direction, growing frustrations, or something else they can’t name. 

What if you took an afternoon and dreamed? What if you asked your spouse if all our prayers got answered, what would life look like in five years? Ten or twenty years from now? 

What if you asked your spouse if all our prayers got answered, what does life look like in 5 years? 10 or 20 years from now?
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As I write this, our youngest will be twelve this summer. In 4 years, our four oldest kids will be out of high school. That is a very different stage of life than where I sit today with multiple kids in high school. Life, relationships, and pastoral ministry will differ greatly for us in 4 years from this simple fact.

But too many of us wake up one day and realize that life happened to us.

Too many of us wake up one day and realize that life happened to us.
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Here are some things that will be different: my schedule will be different in four years. Lord willing, I will have finished my doctorate by then. I will be four years older and have four more years of wisdom than I lack today. My physical life will be different because I will be closer to 50.

All this became even clearer to me several years ago when I spent a summer talking to pastors nearing retirement and asking them about wisdom, things they learned, and things they wish they would’ve done differently. They all said, “If you don’t plan financially, spiritually, physically, mentally, relationally, and emotionally for your future, you will miss all God has for you.”

Many of us only think about the physical or financial side of our future.

As more and more studies are done on life stages, our 50s, 60s, and 70s can be our most productive decades for God. And yet, many pastors and Christians seem to think that it is over once you are past 40.

As more and more studies are done on life stages, our 50s, 60s, and 70s can be our most productive decades for God. And yet, many pastors and Christians seem to think that it is over once you are past 40.
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My hope for you and me is that our best days are ahead of us, whatever those best days may be for you. 

The post Learning to Dream Again appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

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If you’re anything like me, you need to focus. There are times when you need to hunker down and get things done. Yet, your mind wanders. You daydream or think about what will happen later today or tomorrow. It could be a conversation, a meeting, or a vacation you can’t wait to start.

Your lack of focus might come from no desire to do what you are doing, how hard something is, or because you didn’t sleep well last night.

I often cannot focus well because of the whirlwind around me.

Clarity and focus come from having “white space.” This is where you can shut down social media or email and think. To narrow down what matters the most right now.

I’ve heard John Maxwell say that leaders could stop doing 80% of what they’re doing, and no one would notice. That feels high, but there is some merit to it.

Leaders could stop doing 80% of what they’re doing and no one would notice.
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Each day you must be able to say, “If I accomplish nothing else today, here’s what must get done.” That focus helps you to stay on track.

When you find your brain wandering, stand up, walk around, get some fresh air, and then return to something.

Clarity for Your Church or Organization

Clarity doesn’t just matter for you; it has enormous implications for your team and church.

Many teams lack clarity. They are stuck in a whirlwind of activity, simply doing the thing right in front of them. This is easy to do in a church because worship services come around with such regularity (every seven days), so there is a deadline to that whirlwind.

For our team, just like in our family, we discuss what is most important for the next 2-6 months as a team. What are we all going to be working on and moving towards?

In a church setting, it is easy to lose sight of why you are doing something or why something started, and slowly, it is just what you’ve always done. 

Why Clarity Matters

Without clarity and focus, anything and everything is important.

This is where many churches and people get off track in their lives and ministries.

Clarity says this matters more than that.

That is hard to say because it determines ahead of time what you will think about, work on, spend money on, and give manpower to.

Whether you sit down and write this out or say it, you do this daily exercise.

The ones who accomplish things and see greater effectiveness are the ones who decide this instead of falling into it.

The days that I flopped into bed with a feeling of “What did I accomplish today?” were when I wasn’t focused and allowed my day to get away from me.

Amazingly, as you read through the gospels, you see Jesus’s incredible focus. He was fully present wherever he went. Whether teaching, healing, resting, praying, or spending time with his disciples, he was focused on what he was doing. When you think about what he did, you also understand what he didn’t do. He made the choices we have to make every day: what will get our time, energy, and attention?

Communicating Clarity

Patrick Lencioni said, “A leader is to create clarity, communicate clarity, and overcommunicate clarity.”

This is hard as a leader because to do this, you have to be clear on what you and your church are doing. This can lead to a divide, and some people may decide they don’t want to move forward with you, which is hard to navigate. 

Once you have clarity, you must communicate it and continue to communicate it. 

This can feel like a broken record, and you get tired of hearing yourself say it, but you must remember that every time you communicate clarity at your church, someone hears it for the first time. I say the same thing every Sunday when I stand in our volunteer prayer circle. Why? We need to be reminded why we are there, and every week, someone is serving for the first time, so they haven’t heard it. 

How do you know if you’ve communicated it?

One is you are tired of hearing it. But the second is you start hearing people say it back to you. And thirdly, you start hearing people pray for it. 

When these three things happen, people get the vision. 

How do you know if people get the vision? One is you are tired of hearing it. But the second is you start hearing people say it back to you. And thirdly, you start hearing people pray for it.
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One of the hardest things to do when you face disappointments in life is to dream again. And if we’re honest, 2020 has been a dream killer, a year of setbacks, letdowns, and disappointments. There are unmet expectations everywhere. This past Sunday, I preached on how to face those disappointments and setbacks and dreams again. Maybe you are in that place where it is hard to dream. You are just trying to make it through the day, and how do you even know if your dreams will come true. Here’s my encouragement, check out the sermon, and then take some time to get curious and dream again (if you’d like a really creative version of this that our incredible team put together, go here to download it). I believe that God will meet you there and help you move forward with what he puts on your heart. 

In his book Dream Big: Know What You Want, Why You Want It, and What You’re Going to Do About It, Bob Goff lays out some helpful questions to help us dream.

1. Who are you?
2. Where are you?
3. What do you want?

I want to encourage you as you go through this exercise to write things out and dream. We edit our dreams too quickly and miss out on what God has for us. So before you ask ‘how’ questions, take some time to pray and dream. 

We’ll get to the editing and how questions at the end. Right now, it is important to dream, to write, to let your mind wander. As children, we are good at this, but the older we get, it is easy to limit ourselves. Limiting ourselves is how we end up with regrets, disappointments, and cynicism. More than likely, if you’re like most people when it comes to dreams, reality thinking isn’t the problem. It is dreaming that is the struggle. 

Broken Dreams

Before we get to dreams, let’s take a look at our broken dreams. Many of us get stuck in life, and rightfully so because we dreamed and nothing happened. We went after a goal, a hope, a dream, only to have it shattered. Our lives get shattered by the actions of others, and this keeps us where we are.

Larry Crabb has some helpful insight on this: Shattered dreams are never random. They are always a piece in a larger puzzle, a chapter in a larger story. The Holy Spirit uses the pain of shattered dreams to help us discover our desire for God, to help us begin dreaming the highest dream. They are ordained opportunities for the Spirit to awaken, then to satisfy our highest dream.

Don’t just speed through those dreams or that season. What is the Holy Spirit doing in you from those dreams? What is God showing you? Growing in you for His purposes?

Now, if you’re ready to take that step and dream again, read on…

Who are you?

What makes you, you? This is about getting an understanding of your story. What makes you tick? What makes you unique?

All of us have different gifts, personalities, talents, ambitions, and histories. God doesn’t waste any of those. If you grew up in a broken home or grew up in poverty, that has an enormous impact on what God might want to do in your life and future. 

Take some time to write down moments that have impacted your life—both high and low. 

Ask God, what does that say about me? My story? Is there anything on that list you want me to pay attention to? Were there any limiting beliefs in your family growing up? Anything in particular from your family story that you need to pay attention to?

Here are a few other questions that might jog some ideas: What are your strengths, gifts, and things you are good at? How has God uniquely wired you so that you can contribute something special? What do you do without having to think? What do people ask you for advice in or seek out your help with?

Where are you?

This is more about your stage in life than your geography, although geography does matter when it comes to dreams. 

What is your life stage? Did you make a big change in your life: marriage, children, retirement, new job, new school, or new house. Are you about to make a big change in life? Or maybe you would like to make a big change in life. These are important to the stage you are in. 

I’m a dad of 5 kids, two of who are teenagers, so there are dreams I have today that aren’t for right now. That’s okay. This isn’t about limiting yourself or your dreams, but having an honest assessment of who you are and where you are. Just because we can’t do something today doesn’t mean we can never do that thing. It just means, today may not be the time. 

So, be honest: where are you in life? 

What do you want?

Even though we love the idea of dreams, it can be difficult to attach words to them. But list out what do you want in life. What do you want to be known for? What things do you want people to say about you at your funeral? What stories do you want people to tell about you? Do you want to travel somewhere? Do something you’ve never tried before? What legacy do you want to leave in your life? Recently I heard a pastor in his 80’s say, “More people need to ask, ‘What kind of old person do I want to be?’” That really struck me and has caused my wife and me to think differently about our lives and dreams. 

If it helps to think backward, write out where you hope to be in 5 years. For many of us, we have put this on hold this year because of how hard it has been, but this is a moment to take that back and dream again. 

Don’t edit this yet. Don’t start to “how” your list and try to figure out how you’ll get there or get it done. Just list it out. 

Now What?

Take a moment to look at what you’ve written down. Bring those things before God in prayer. Ask him what things he truly wants you to focus on this week, this month, this year, or in the next decade. Not everything on your list is for now, and that’s okay. Dreams don’t always happen fast. 

Depending on your personality, you might look at your list and see some impossible things, that is great. Continue asking God for his help. Maybe you see some overwhelming or scary things, continue bringing those before God, and ask him for courage and guidance. Ask this person to pray with you as you move forward with your dreams. 

Let me give one helpful insight: The dreams that help people, that are meaningful to you and others, that line up with your personal values, those are the ones that will draw the best out of us. Whether 1 person knows, we accomplished it or a thousand. Those numbers aren’t important. 

The post How to Dream [Again] appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

All of us have hopes and dreams. You and I look at our lives and see things we wish were there, or things we want to be different. It could be for your career, your family, a relationship with a friend, sibling, spouse, parent or child.

This vision, the difference between what is and what could be in many ways keeps us moving forward in life. This dream gets us up in the morning and gives us hope that things will change and get better, even when it seems hopeless.

A vision is a difference between what is and what could be.
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Sadly though, many of our dreams stay like that. Dreams. They don’t get out of our heads and hearts. We don’t tell anyone the world that we see, the hope that we have.

Why don’t we go public with our dreams and goals?

Going public with your dream.
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There are a few reasons:

1. We have a lot of self-doubts. These doubts could come from your family of origin or somewhere else, but we believe all kinds of messages about our dreams that aren’t true. Things like, we aren’t smart enough, we aren’t a good enough parent, boss or leader; we’re too late to get started, we aren’t old enough or have enough experience.

Whatever message we carry around and we all have a tape that plays in our head.

Mine is often centered around not being smart enough or not belonging in a room that I find myself in. I’ll sit with other leaders and think, “I don’t belong here.” This will cause me to clam up and not bring my whole self to a situation. I miss out, and so do others.

With our self-doubts, the moment we go public with a dream and someone tells us why that can’t happen; they confirm our self-doubts. So why put ourselves through that?

So we stay quiet, and our dreams die a slow death in our heart.

2. We like the idea of a dream more than the work of a dream. Many people love the idea of starting a business, church, going back to school, getting out of debt, but not the work it will take. I see this a lot in church planting circles. A potential church planter has gone to some conferences, listened to the podcasts, read the books, can tell you the strategy for his plant, the name and even has a logo, but no people. Why? It is just in his head. Now, a dream has to start there. But if it never moves, it will never move anyone.

And honestly, if you aren’t willing to do the work of your dream, it won’t happen and it wasn’t yours anyway.

We like the idea of a dream more than the work of a dream.
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How do you know if you should go public with your dream?

Andy Stanley says an effective vision shares the problem, the solution, the reason something must be done and the reason something must be done now.

Just because a problem exists, doesn’t mean you need to solve it or that the time is right. There are lots of things you can point out as a problem, but don’t have a solution to.

Does it need to be solved now? The answer to that question is, not always. It might be nice, but it might not be yet.

At the intersection of that statement: a problem, a solution and a reason that something must be done and done now is the answer to whether your dream is right, the timing is right, and it is time to go public with it.

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People leave churches for all kinds of reasons.

They might move, their kids get older, their schedules change, the church moves to locations.

They also leave for theological reasons. Maybe a new pastor has a different bent on an important theological point. They may have changed the version of the Bible they preach from (not kidding on that one).

The preaching may have changed and it no longer feels as deep as it used to or now it’s too deep and isn’t focused on application like it used to be.

Some of the reasons are good and normal, some make pastors scratch their heads and wonder what happened.

What I’ve learned (and I don’t have a study on this), but I think the number one reason people leave your church is…

Your strategy.

Another way to put it: how you do church. 

The #1 reason people leave your church.
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Think about it.

Almost every church holds up Acts 2 as the model they are going after.

Almost every church and Christian would agree that we are to live out the great commission (making disciples) and the great commandment (loving God and others).

But how?

That’s strategy. That’s how you do church (for lack of a better word).

Your strategy is how you as a church uniquely live these things out.

Do you have small groups, classes, missional communities, men’s ministry, women’s ministry, a combination of these? That’s strategy, but they all get at how you disciple and connect people to each other.

What about kids and students? When do they meet? Do they serve? Attend the service? Are they off on their own? What role do they play in community groups?

All strategy.

How about preaching and music? Do you go line by line through a book of the Bible, jump around, preach topically? What kind of music or liturgy do you use? How often do you do communion?

All strategy.

Make no mistake pastor or church leader, when someone walks up to you on a Sunday morning and says, “We’re leaving”, if you press long enough, it will be the strategy, almost every time.

Now, this isn’t bad at all.

In fact, when this happens this should tell you that your strategy and culture are real and clear.

As well, this is also why people come to your church.

The #1 reason people come to your church.
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They often don’t know it, but your strategy is not only why they stay, but also why they come.

Why?

Because your strategy comes through everywhere. Your strategy on being simple, programmatic, attractional, missional or all 4, attracts them and others.

The post The #1 Reason People Leave Your Church (And Love Your Church) appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

If you are anything like me, you are not a patient person.

Patience is hard.

I always hear people joke, don’t pray for patience.

Why?

We want things now. We are an instant culture. We want fast food. We want to post pictures instantly. It’s even called Instagram.

Patience is hard when it comes to leadership as well, not only because of the reasons just mentioned and the way we are wired and how our culture operates but because of how long things take in leadership.

Let me explain.

Leaders are future oriented people. One of the things that separates leaders from followers is the ability of leaders to see a desired future and move people towards it. Because of this, by the time things become a reality, leaders have lived with them for months, sometimes years.

When a church launches a new initiative, ministry, program, a building campaign, buys land or hires a new staff member, the leaders have anticipated this moment for months or years.

Patience is hard. And crucial.

For leaders, because change feels like an eternity to them, it is easy to forget how whiplashed our followers can feel when a change happens. For a leader, they have read books, prayed, talked to mentors and other leaders, listened, and waited for months to launch something. When their followers give pushback, they think the problem is with the followers (and it may be), but often they are not giving their followers the same time to process the change as they had to think about the change.

If you are in a spot as a leader who is about to make a change or launch something, here are some ways to handle it:

1. Be patient. Yes, you may need to wait a little longer. The time may not be right, the funds may not be there, the momentum may not be in your corner. You may need to have a little more patience.
2. Give people time. If you took weeks or months to research and process this decision, give your followers at least some time to sit with it. Let them ask questions. Just because someone has questions or gives pushback does not mean they are being divisive or are not on board. They are processing.
3. Be honest about the loss, not just the excitement of the future. When discussing a change, talk about the loss. With every change there are gains and losses. Leaders see the gains, followers see the losses. Leader, look at the losses and talk about them, let your followers know you hear them, but help them see the gains.
4. Be excited and decisive. At some point the time for patience and waiting is over, and it is time to be decisive and move forward. When is that time? It depends on the situation, but you are the leader, so you’ll know.

4 ways to lead when it is hard to lead.
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Related articles

• Leadership Paradox: Going Slow is Often Better Than Speed
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If you are a leader, you might wonder if your vision as a church is clear. How do you know if you are accomplishing it? Often, leaders can be so hard charging they never stop to ask the question of whether they are hitting their target. Or, they are so complacent that they don’t care.

Here’s a simple way to know if your vision is clear: Are people coming to your church and leaving your church because of it. 

Is anyone attending your church because of your vision?

You will know this is true by talking to new people at your church. What drew them to your church? What excites them the most about your church? Why did they get plugged into a missional community, small group or serving team?

Listen to the stories people tell about your church, what they say when they baptized.

Are you seeing new people attend? New people stick?

If what people say is not part of your vision, you either have the wrong vision or it is not very clear.

Has anyone left your church because of your vision?

This will sound unloving and I understand.

As a pastor, you want as many people as possible to attend your church. I want everyone in Tucson to come to Revolution Church, love it and stay. I want them to be on board with our vision, our target and what we feel like God has called us to.

Everyone won’t though.

As much as that hurts, it is okay.

Every city needs lots of churches to reach all of the people in it.

Recently, I talked with two families that left our church and as I talked with them about the reasons why one of them articulated, “We just don’t agree with the vision.” When I asked him to clarify. He told me, “Revolution focuses too much on people who don’t know Jesus.”

He’s right. That is our vision.

If no one has left your church in the past year because they don’t agree with the vision of your church, it is either not clear, not bold enough or you aren’t actually doing your vision.

People don’t leave passive churches because of the vision.

People don’t leave visionless churches because of the vision.

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I’ve been doing a series of posts on churches and the target they have (or don’t have). You can read part 1 on the fact that every church has a target (whether defined or not) here.

Once you determine that you will have a target, the question then becomes, who is it? How do you define it? How specific should it be?

Before you can answer those questions, maybe you are still on the fence about this whole idea. Having a target as a church sounds like a business, or that you don’t like certain people or that you are catering to someone.

As I mentioned already, you have a target, it just might be defined yet.

Here’s what happens in churches without a clearly defined target:

• Every idea is a good idea. If you don’t have a clear target, every idea has to be put on the table for discussion and kept on the table. You will struggle to say no to anything, because your only reason will be “you don’t want to do it” or “we’ve alway done it this way.” Should we have a drama team? A puppet team? A quilting fair? A small group for coin collectors? Should use drums? Sing hymns? Preach topically or expository sermons? The answer to the above is yes. Do it all.
• People burn out. Which leads quickly to burnout. When you don’t have a target and say yes to things you should say no to, you end up with a busy church calendar.
• No one knows what the win is, so excitement and momentum are low or nonexistent. This is why church is so sad to me. I talked to a friend recently who quit his job at a church after “asking for almost 2 years for the lead pastor to define the win for our church. I even told him if what I was doing didn’t fit, I’d stop doing those things. I just wanted to know what the win was.” If you don’t know what the win is as the leader, no one else knows. If no one else knows, no one will know where you are, how you are doing and if it is worth their time, money, and effort. Without this knowledge, they are simply showing up. And no one enjoys just showing up. People will do it for a little bit out of a sense of duty, but they will walk away soon enough.
• Budgeting is often a battle. If every idea is a good one because there is no target, no defined win, budget meetings are filled with people arguing for their pet projects and ministries they care about. If you don’t define the win, people will make their own.
• God moves in other churches. I can’t prove this, I have no data on this. I can only look at the church I lead and the times the win was not clear there is a definite absence of God moving compared to the times the win was clear. This is convicting to me as a leader as I think about Revolution. It spurs me to stay as clear as possible, to never let me passion wane.

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Last week, as I wrapped up our series Beautiful at Revolution, I preached on Proverbs 31. If you missed it, you can listen to it here.

One of the things that struck me is verse 23 when we are told what her husband is like.

There are many sides and applications to this verse.

The first is to women, which I blogged about here. The other is to fathers of daughters.

Many fathers talk a big game about protecting their daughters, yet when it comes down to teaching them about sex, fashion, modesty, who to date and marry, they cower in the corner.

Every man wants to know that their life will matter. Every man wants to leave a legacy when they are gone. This is why it matters how involved you are in your kids lives and what you teach them. When your daughter marries a man, your legacy will be determined by him.

This man, will teach your grandkids how to worship Jesus, how to read their Bible, he will teach them a work ethic, he will teach them about Jesus, money and generosity, sex and fashion. He will teach your grandsons how to view and treat women by how he will treat your daughter. He will treat your granddaughters about how men treat women by how he will treat your daughter. All of these things will be taught by him.

Now, think about how men are involved in who their daughter marries.

They often know very little about the man who marries his daughter. They only know that their daughter likes him, he claims to be a Christian and he came to ask permission for her hand. What a guy.

Sadly, this is typical and seen as a good thing and not even close to be able to know if he is worthy of your daughter.

Men, do more than this.

I’m not saying you should go on a date with your daughter, but be around her and the man she wants to marry. Watch him. Spend time alone with him. Ask him about his relationship with Jesus. Talk about theology and the gospel. Ask him about purity and sex. Is this personal? Yes. You know this from your life to be true, your sexual history dramatically impacted your marriage.

My hope for men is that they step up to the plate and serve their daughters in this way. You encourage your daughter in school, in a major, jobs to take, opportunities to spend time on. Then, when it comes to marriage we think, “That is her choice.” Everything you help her in is her choice, this one, marriage, is just the most important life decision she will make outside of following Jesus.

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I mentioned in my mind dump on Monday that we have our sermons for 2014 planned out and I got a few emails from guys asking how we plan that far in advance, what goes into it, how we decide what to do that far in advance, etc.

So, here are some thoughts.

First, why plan that far in advance. This often gets debated. Should you plan at the last minute or plan ahead. The fly by the seat of their pants guys will often say, “I’m waiting for the Holy Spirit to speak” or “If you plan that far in advance, you will take the Holy Spirit out of it.” I’ve learned that the Holy Spirit can speak 1 hour before I preach a sermon and 1 year before I preach a sermon. I just need to listen. I think planning ahead is biblical and wise, whether it is your life or ministry. Can you take the Holy Spirit out of things by planning that far in advance? Yes. You can also take the Holy Spirit out by being a last minute guy because you are more likely to preach what you want to preach.

Here are a few things I think through when planning a preaching calendar:

How to plan a preaching calendar.
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1. What have I already preached on. It is important to know what you have already preached on and not repeat it. If you have just done 3 NT books of the Bible, change it up. We try to alternate between old testament and new. It doesn’t always happen that way, but that’s the rhythm we seek to have. We are in John right now and before that we did Ecclesiastes, Ephesians, Joshua, and before that 1 & 2 Peter. You don’t have to rigidly lock into that, but it helps to make sure you are preaching different books, topics and genres of Scripture.
2. What topics do I feel like my church needs to hear. This gets at who is at your church, who you are hoping to reach, what questions your culture is asking. Every year at our church, we seek to preach on marriage, relationships, generosity, and money. We will hit those topics every single year regardless of what books we preach through. Why? Our culture is always asking questions about those things. In this point, you need to think through time of year. We talked about doing a series on pain and suffering in February, but people aren’t asking those questions then. They are still asking questions about meaning, purpose and how to have a better new year, be a better person. You can argue those aren’t great questions to ask, but you can’t argue with the fact that they are asking those questions.
3. What haven’t I talked on recently. This helps to identify the places you gravitate towards and help expose things you are afraid to address or have simply skipped. This is when you look back at your old sermon schedule and see where you’ve been.
4. What am I passionate about. This can be good and bad. It is good because you have to preach what you are passionate about. Otherwise, no one will listen. It is bad because you can easily preach what you are only passionate about. It took me 5 years at Revolution to preach through a whole gospel. Why? Because I love the NT letters more. That can be unhealthy for a church if it goes too long. Other preachers stay in the gospels and ignore Paul, or ignore the OT.
5. Where is my church going. This is a vision question. What is coming up in the next year that you can preach towards? If you are praying about planting a church, preach towards that. If you feel like you need to preach on generosity or grow in community, preach that vision. This means though, as a pastor you need to lead with vision and know where you are going.

5 things to keep in mind when planning a preaching calendar.
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