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Right now many of you are working on closing out the year as 2006 comes to an end. You’re throwing your Harvest Party (Holy Ghost Weiner Roast), gathering testimonies for the Thanksgiving service, taking up your yearly missionary offering, and preparing the hotest Christmas cantata from the late John W. Peterson to draw people in for Christmas. After it’s all said and done you’ll probably retreat to your office, sit back in your chair, and let out a big sigh of relief. News flash: 2007 is coming (unless the good Lord returns, that is). If you fail to plan, you plan to fail and if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time and all those clichés that communicate the truth that nothing will get accomplished if you don’t set goals.

Take some time over the next month, sit down with your leadership, and lay out a plan for what ideas you want to communicate in your worship services over the fifty-two weekends in 2007. Set aside the other plans you have to make, like your church softball league, the Easter program, and your all-church picnic, and think of Bible passages you want to teach from and the topics you want to cover. Here are some ideas to get you started in planning out the 52 sermons for 2007.

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This is the second article of the two part series How Clean is Clean?. Read part one if you haven’t already.

In the first article, I addressed some principles and foundational issues for keeping the church clean. This article will give you some specific standards and ideas you can implement that will help you practice the art of Clean-Fu beyond the day-to-day rituals.

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My wife is the Zen Master of cleaning. She can wield a dust mop and work a pair of rubber gloves like Spiderman slings a web or Chuck Norris works over a band of thugs. I don’t think of it as cleaning as much as she’s practicing the art of Clean-Fu. Our house gets messy and cluttered from time to time but it doesn’t take her long to work her magic and get the place in shape. When we’re expecting visitors, step aside because you’ll see some moves that will impress the most severe germophobe. I’m never worried about how our house will look when we’re planning to entertain friends or if someone drops by with little notice because my wife keeps the house up with black belt skill. I lend a hand from time to time when I’m able but I’ve found it’s best to just step back and be a spectator in this clean-fu match of woman vs. mess.

We’ve been married for eleven years and I’ve come to appreciate her, her hard work, and the clean house as a result. There are times when I walk into someone’s house, an office, a store, or even a church and notice the standards of cleanliness are less than what I enjoy at home. Those places are by no means on the verge of being condemned or overrun by germs, dirt, and clutter but it is apparent that the standards are different; not terrible, just different.

Unless your church meets in a mud hut or in the littered alley behind your local grocery store, you should have certain standards for the cleanliness of your building in preparation for worship on Sunday morning and other uses throughout the week. It’s possible you have little or no control over the cleanliness of the environment because you worship in a school or another public or rented space. Whatever your situation, whether you are paid or volunteer cleaning staff, you should have principles for cleaning, standards of cleanliness, and a schedule.

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This article is the fourth part of the series Extending Your Sermons Beyond Sunday. Be sure to read the first, second, and third articles, if you haven’t already.

This series is designed to give you ideas on how to help your listeners remember your sermon after they walk out the church doors. We’ve discussed having them leave with an outline, an object, or an action in part one. Part two was about using technology and providing your sermons online, on CDs, and through podcasting. Tweaking your message was the topic of part three. This article will give you ideas on how to expand your church’s ministry to further your Sunday morning teachings.

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As I look back at my formative years, I see music and musical influences appearing as early as I can recall. I remember my brother’s Bee Gee’s drum set, the stack of Barry Manilow vinyls my mom had, and my other brother’s Iron Maiden and Kiss albums. In fact, I claimed the Kiss Destroyer album as my own because I developed an affection for it, the only way a four-year-old can. Crocodile Rock, The Warrior, Mr. Roboto, and Photograph were some of my favorite songs. Popular music was an integral part of my life much like a kidney or my epidermis. Because of my religious upbringing, I was prohibited from listening to much of the music that I liked, although, that hardly prevented me from continuing to buy cassettes and listening to the radio. By the way, dad, that Def Leppard cassette was not part of a research project for English class. I’m sure you already knew that.

Associated with my “devil music” prohibition was getting a steady dose of the classics at church on Sunday. By classics, I mean hymns. Though they compared very little to my taste in music, I tolerated them to a point of mild enjoyment. The songs were about God, people enjoyed singing them, and I was sure God enjoyed it so that was good enough for me.

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This article is the third part of the series Extending Your Sermons Beyond Sunday. Be sure to read the first and second articles, if you haven’t already.

As a reminder, the point of this four-part series is to give you some tips on what to do to help those in your congregation keep the words you speak on Sunday morning on their minds throughout the week. You invest many hours in preparation for your sermon on Sunday morning and you want to have some assurance they won’t forget it as soon as they sit down to Sunday dinner. The first article dealt with ways you can send them home with something. The second article introduced ways you can use technology to increase the shelf life of your message. This article will address the sermon itself and how you can structure and formulate your message to help it stick. Without any further blah blah blah and yada yada yada, I’ll get right into it.

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How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.
With my whole heart I seek you; let me know wander from you commandments!
I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes!
With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.
In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.
I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.
I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.
Psalm 119:9-16 ESV

Follwers of Christ value and encourage the regular reading of God’s Word. How can we seek God, keep our way pure, and avoid sin? We do this by reading the Word of God, meditating on it, delighting in it, and remembering it. I don’t think any of us would say, “I don’t really think reading the Bible has anything to do with pursuing God and becoming more like Jesus Christ. I can do just fine without it.” Most of the time when I find myself making wrong choices or doing and saying things that aren’t representative of Christ and His followers it’s because I’m not spending time seeking the heart of God. My spirit desperately needs to be tied to God’s Spirit or else I’ll go my own selfish way. So far, my way hasn’t given me anything but trouble and a persistent red handprint on my forehead.

That’s why we encourage each other to read the Bible. Our toddlers learn the song, “Read your Bible, pray everyday,” and “The B I B L E, yes, that’s the book for me,” because we want them to understand the importance of Scripture at an early age. Regular Bible reading is often mistaken as a formula to prmote a successful Christian life. We create year-long checklists and daily reading journals not because checking a box each day and spending n minutes in prayer fills up God’s divine scorecard, but because we understand that a young man can keep his way pure by guarding it according to God’s Word.

With that in mind, I’ve compiled a list of sites that provide various scorecards lists and resources you can use to read through the Bible in a year. As 2006 comes to a close and you start to make plans for the coming year, get a head start on ordering and offering these resources to those in your congregation.

Personally, I’m a bigger fan of reading the Bible in larger chunks than just 3-4 chapters per day. I’d encourage you, if your goal is to read through the entire Bible over a period of time, to read it in 30, 60, or 90 days. It might take you a little bit of time each day but you’ll get the advantage of seeing a broader context by consuming larger portions in one sitting. Imagine watching all eleven or so hours of the LOTR Extended Editions in 15 minute segments over a period of a month and a half. You wouldn’t get a good grasp of the storyline and the flow, would you? Put down Tom Clancy or those romance novels for a couple months and spend that time reading through the Bible.

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This article is the second part of the series Extending Your Sermons Beyond Sunday. Be sure to read the first article, if you haven’t already.

Nine seasons of Seinfeld sadly came to a close as Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine sat in a cold, lifeless prison cell as a result of their selfish ways and thoughtless inaction. A small tear ran down my cheek when I watched the last of the Lord of the Rings trilogy knowing that this was the end. The telling of such a great tale had been told only to live within my memory (oh, and the books that I tried to read and gave up on. But, whatever.). Those evenings in May of ‘99 and December of ‘03 represent the void that is present in my soul every Sunday morning after hearing good, Biblical preaching, a moment that lasts for about thirty to forty minutes and then ceases to exist outside of our memory.

But soft! The proper placement of ones and zeros on a computer or an optical disc or the reconfiguration of a piece of magnetized tape can capture the essence of Seinfeld, Middle Earth, and a 30 minute message allowing them to exist in my collection forever and ever.

Technological advancements in the last few decades and especially the last few years have changed the way we can capture, store, and distribute media. Take technology by the reins and allow the people in your congregation to relive those moments at their leisure… not a season of Seinfeld, I mean, but your series on Jesus’ prayer in Matthew 6 or your message on Psalm 23. Here are some ways you can use technology to extend the shelf life of your sermons.

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An assistant is essential to the success of many a great leader and the pastor is no exception. It has been said, “Behind every successful man is a woman.” Even though that quote most likely refers to the worth and supportive nature of a good wife, the principle still applies. Or, we could defer to Groucho Marx’ quote, “Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.” Then again, maybe not.

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Scenario: you’re at Bob Evans having breakfast with your head deacon/elder and you ask him a question about the great sermon you delivered just two days ago. Beads of sweat appear on his brow and his face becomes flush. It’s apparent that he can’t remember a word you said or if you spoke from the Old Testament, New Testament, or the newspaper. The cinnamon pancakes taste different smothered in awkward tension that now exists between you and the soon-to-be-ousted elder. Ok, maybe it’s not that bad but the reality is that an individual only remembers a small percentage of information he hears and it’s probable that the three points and poem you preached on Sunday exists in his memory between his childhood friend’s phone number and the color of the pizza delivery guy’s shirt from last Friday.

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