PreachingToday.com: Dan, tell us a little bit about how you've normally planned your sermon series for the year—let's say from September - August.

Dan Meyer: My typical pattern is to gather a group of key staff/leaders in May or June and brainstorm together a list of topics, issues, or needs that might feed into our preaching ministry for the coming "school year." Our conversation focuses on three areas:

1. PASTORAL: What do we sense that we and the other people of our church especially need to be coached on, encouraged with, or challenged about in the season ahead?
2. OUTREACH: What are the struggles or questions people in our wider world have which would make it easier for our members to invite their friends to our church?
3. MISSION/VISION: What are the principles and practices we need to sow into our congregation in order to go where we believe God is calling us to go as a church?

As we discuss these questions we generate a pretty large and raw list of possibilities. But at the end of the day, somebody has to do the work of sifting and sorting all of the possible ideas that get surfaced into a specific preaching plan. As the lead preacher in our church, the job of creating a draft plan falls to me. Here's what that yearly timetable looks like:

1. After the initial brainstorming session, I'll set aside some time to boil down that large list of possibilities into a smaller set of free-standing messages or sermon series and match these to a September-through-August calendar.
2. The following month (June or July), I'll review that calendar with the same group of staff/leaders, make refinements to it based on their feedback, and lead the team in starting to imagine ways of supporting the next series with graphics, music, liturgy and other resources.
3. Then we usually begin promotion for the September series in late July or early August.

So this year you've decided to plan your sermons based on lectionary readings. For preachers who may not be familiar with the lectionary, what is it and how will you preach it this year?

The Revised Common Lectionary is a curriculum of biblical texts used today by many Protestant Christian churches the world over. (Catholics and Greek Orthodox churches also have their own lectionary of weekly biblical texts.) The Lectionary supplies Christian churches with a weekly menu of four readings: a Psalm, another Old Testament reading, a Gospel reading, and a text from the Acts or one of the Epistles. Those reading the Lectionary will cover the substance of the entire Bible over a three-year cycle which includes a Year A, Year B. and Year C.

We've committed to making the Lectionary texts the focus of our preaching this year, rather than the usual series approach, and entitled our year-long focus, INVITATIONS. We've told the congregation that they are invited by God to receive his life-giving Word more deeply into their weekly journey.

To keep this overarching theme from becoming too routine or tiresome, we've broken the year down into a variety of "sub-invitations"—to come, to be rooted, to give thanks, to expect, etc. The themes of these sub-invitations are being expressed in the music and liturgy of each weekend and picked up in the sermon where possible.

Why did you decide to preach the lectionary texts? What benefits do you hope to gain?

Much as when I did our series on DISCOVERING GOD a few years ago, I was feeling dissatisfied with the "consumer-oriented" nature of my preaching. [Note from PT: The series referenced generated Preaching Today's #1 and #2 most downloaded messages of 2011]. It seemed like all my recent messages were aimed at "felt needs" and "church objectives." I began to wonder: What would happen if I let the global church and the Scriptures themselves tell me what to think about and focus on each week? What might it do for our church if we set aside our personal felt needs and our parochial agenda in favor of listening deeply to the voice of God and the Christian tradition across time?

Using the Lectionary as our curriculum for the year seemed to have several clear benefits:

1. First, we would gain a balanced, unified, and manageable diet of texts (just four passages) that every member of our church could be reading in common during the week leading up to each weekend. This might increase biblical literacy and build common spiritual conversations in the church and home.
2. Secondly, because all four texts on each Lectionary "menu" are thematically-linked, reading and preaching on these texts would help people gain a sense of the depth and continuity of God's revelation throughout the Scriptures.
3. Thirdly, advance planning for worship and small group studies would be easier because of the myriad of preaching, liturgical, and group-processing resources already available for the Common Lectionary.
4. Finally, by calling people into an encounter with Scripture texts being studied across the global church, we would be moving against the consumer-oriented individualism tainting discipleship today and helping people sense, instead, their part in the larger story and movement of God.

How did your leaders respond when you initially shared your plans to preach the lectionary texts?

In certain quarters, there was considerable anxiety about it. Some of our lay leaders had come out of past church experiences where the Lectionary was used, but the linkage of this Scripture to daily life was poorly explained. These people were worried that by going to the Lectionary, we might be abandoning the life-relevant preaching they associated with our church.

Some of our staff leaders (including yours truly) worried that by not developing our preaching curriculum on the basis of felt needs or hot topics, we wouldn't be able to sustain the high worship attendance need to support the ministry of a large church.

Some of our preachers expressed concern that they might not be able to discern the common theme(s) that linked the four Lectionary passages.

Nonetheless, plenty of our leaders very much liked the idea that we were going to preach from the lectionary, largely because of the anticipated benefits I described earlier.

Now that you're a few months into it, how are your people responding to this idea?

People seem to love this approach. Worship attendance is strong. We're regularly hearing from folks how much they are enjoying the clear and manageable focus the four readings provide for their personal devotions and group study. Many people do seem to be doing the four Bible readings on weekdays leading up to our weekend teaching time. There's a very positive buzz about this journey so far.

What surprises or challenges are you discovering?

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I've been surprised at the extent to which the Bible IS indeed thematically linked across its range of time and texts. I have often talked about this reality as a validation of the Scriptures' divine authorship. While preaching the Lectionary, however, I have often been ambushed by wonder at just how true this is.

On the challenge side, I (and our other preachers) sometimes find it difficult to weave all four texts into a single sermon. We've given ourselves permission to make one or more of the texts our major focus and to use the other texts in other parts of the worship service—perhaps as a call to worship, an introduction to prayer, or a meditation projected during a musical offering. We want our worship services to be "scripture-soaked" and the Lectionary has been a very helpful resource in advancing that value.

What advice would you give to other pastors who may be thinking about preaching through the lectionary for the year or for a season?

Two thoughts … First, don't be afraid of this. While it's natural to worry about what will hold our congregation's interest, it is a wonderful exercise of faith to let God's Word (versus people's stated interests or felt needs) be the starting point for preaching. God promises that his Word will accomplish the purpose for which He sent it (Isaiah 55:10-11). Preaching the Lectionary offers a marvelous opportunity to watch him keep that promise.

Secondly, make it more than a weekend affair. Invite people to read and reflect on the texts, personally, ahead of the public teaching. It will strengthen their connection with God, further their interest in reading the Bible, and enrich their experience of worship on the weekend.

Who of us wouldn't be delighted with that?

Dan Meyer is pastor of Christ Church.us, a nondenominational, multisite church with locations in Oak Brook and Lombard, Illinois.