So many things in a start up church are overwhelming. By it’s very definition, a start up church is creating something where there was nothing. And converting a school/movie theater/pub/living room in to a church service, and then back again can be daunting. Producing fresh sermons + music + creative media + topics + children’s’ curriculum + print materials + web content EVERY WEEK for the foreseeable future can be very intimidating.

This is why learning to scope a task or problem is imperative for a start up church.

For instance, finding a new topic to teach every Sunday is a huge challenge. How do you come up with something fresh all the time? The way is to break the issue of “What to talk about” into scopes.
#1 – What do we need to communicate on a regular basis? (relationships, spiritual disciplines, authentic faith, finances, etc.) and how often do these need to be communicated? (Annually? Every 2 years?). Figure these out as a team.
#2 – Map out the year ahead. In October 2010, map out all of 2011. This isn’t setting anything in stone, but giving you a direction. e.g.. January = spiritual disciplines, with a corporate fast, and Bible reading plan. February = relationships, with something “surprise & delight” for Valentine’s day….
#3 – Six to eight weeks before the series begins, start branding it. Come up with a name and a theme for the series over all. What big idea are you hoping to communicate through this series? What media can you use that will help tie everything in?
#4) Schedule the services in the series. If it’s a 4 week series, what 4 points do you want to get across? Are these stand-alone messages, or do you want them to build on each other each week? List out the sermons: Jan 2, 2011 – Fasting. Jan 9, 2011 – Praying. Jan 16, 2011 – Reading The Bible. Jan 23, 2011 – Evangelism. This will give the creative types ample time to develop dramas, videos, slideshows, websites, print material, performance songs, etc. to reinforce the message.
#5) Plan each service. 1 to 2 weeks before the service, have a sermon outline, and service layout ready, to give everybody time to internalize the message that you are collectively presenting.

Scoping is also a key element when it comes to dealing with problems. It’s easy for an issue to blow out of proportion if you can’t keep it in it’s proper perspective. If the computerized children’s church check in system is bottlenecking the process of getting kid’s in to the service, it’s time to evaluate the problem. But is it a matter of needing a faster computer/internet connection? Or does the entire system need to be scrapped for the sake of speed? “Pencil & Paper” may not be fancy, but it seldom crashes. Who needs to be involved in the discussion and resolution of the issue? Can a given problem be broken down in to smaller, bite sized problems, that different people can solve?

I believe scope is also imperative when you look at how much of a topic do you cover in a 35 minute sermon? If you’re talking about Spiritual Authority are you going to try to cram 5 key principles in to one sermon? Or are you going to neglect 2, and put the other 3 principles in to 3 separate sermons?

And finally, a HUGE temptation for a start up church is the “If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself” mentality. Ultimately, the buck stops with the lead pastor, but what is the scope of pastoral responsibility? It’s important to break down the jobs that need doing, and figure out who’s responsible to get it done. The pastor’s “scope” may be to provide a direction for the arts department, but it’s up to the director to organize the creative media.

Whenever we encounter something that seems big, complicated and daunting, we’ve come to realize that by breaking the task in to multiple issues, and addressing them individually at different times, everything runs a lot smoother. When you’re planning out the year, you don’t have to know what 3 points you want to make in a sermon 11 months from now, but you can set a direction for all the teams to be excited about.

One of the things I love most about being a “Tech Pastor” is the “Pastor” part. I’m glad I get to do more than figure out why the sound board is buzzing, or how to light kid’s church. I get to do premarital counseling with couples, pray with people in tough times, and several times a year I get the privilege of speaking at our worship services. It helps me hone my public speaking skills, and it gives our lead pastor a little bit of a break, and chance for him to get ahead on his messages.

I have a series of posts lined up for this blog, breaking down the different elements of a “sermon”. I put it in quotes, because my posts will probably vary somewhat from traditional homiletics.

Tomorrow we’re starting a new series called “That’s What She Said”, and we’ll be doing character studies of women in the Bible. I’m speaking the first message of the series, and I thought I’d give you a little insight in how I prepare for a message.

I prepare my message with mind-mapping software. I know there are great tools out there for sermon preparation, but I find I work REALLY well with mind-maps. It gives me the freedom to let my thoughts fork in a thousand different directions while I’m brainstorming ideas. Then it also gives me the flexibility to completely rearrange those thoughts in to a specific structure. I normally put together my outline, then I present it to a small group, consisting of the other pastors and creative leaders at Shoreline, and I get their inspired feedback. I then rework the message, including input from the group, and add several layers of detail. Lastly I transcribe it to ‘shorthand’ slides in Keynote for me to look at when I’m actually speaking on stage. The more times I can transcribe it, the easier it is for me to internalize the message, and then I just need cryptic one or two sentence phrases in my notes to trigger the correct train of thought while I’m speaking.

I highly recommend FreeMind, an open source mind-mapping program. I used it for years, it’s free, and it’s available for Windows, OS X, and every variety of *nix imaginable. I now use ConceptDraw’s MindMap Pro in OS X.

So here is a PDF of the mind map for my sermon on Ruth, and an rich text doc of the exact same thing in outline form. Also, here is the video bumper for the series.