Pastor's Midweek Message

October 15, 2025

Sisters and brothers,

As you receive this, I’m working remotely for a few days. Every fall, I take a few days to go away, spend some time with God, and listen for what it is God wants to share with us in the coming year. This week is my fall planning retreat, and I want to take you behind the scenes a little, to show you what it’s about.

I know some pastors plan week to week. They wait for the Holy Spirit to move them as to what they will be preaching about in the coming week. And there are positives to that approach: it allows them to be very agile in changing topics to suit the current environment, for instance.

The model I use, however, is one that was recommended to me even before I was called into pastoral ministry. It comes from, among others, Bishop Tom Berlin and Mike Slaughter, well-known names in United Methodism who have a lot to teach us newbie pastors. It involves a period of intentional prayer and intentional listening for God, over the course of several days, to hear how the Spirit is inviting us to worship for the entire next year. Sometimes I go up to the mountains for this time; sometimes to the beach. I’ll take walks, I’ll spend time in prayer. It’s a great way to experience God, and to listen for how God is moving and asking us to follow.

The advantage of this process for me, and for Sharon and Barbara and the rest of the worship team, is that we’ll have things planned out well in advance. Barbara can pick hymns and rehearse with the choir, without having to wait on me to tell them each week what we’re covering. I can develop sermon series around a topic, allowing us to explore it in some depth that’s still relevant to our journeys. This also allows me the freedom from panic in a given week, when it’s Friday and I don’t know what to preach about on Sunday yet.

The model still allows for flexibility. If there’s a major development, some crisis in the community, I can still set aside what we’re planning to talk about in a given week and turn instead to addressing that. And as the worship team can attest, sometimes yep I will make a tweak as we get closer to a given weekend.

But what I love the most is how much the process is centered around what God is leading us to examine in a given season. Consequently, it often happens that what we talk about on a given day, which was planned even a year ago, is incredibly relevant. One individual who attends infrequently happened to be in worship one day, and commented later that what I preached on that day was exactly what that person needed to hear. I can’t take credit for that: the topic was one God had put on my heart last fall. And I can’t tell you how often that happens, where what we’re addressing is exactly right for what’s happening in our world. To me, this is the hallmark of God’s handiwork in this process: that God knew exactly what God was doing. 

So join with me in prayer for this week, that God would show me what it is God most wants us to hear about in 2026. And pray that God would use this time to create worship that is meaningful, relevant, and which serves to advance the Kingdom right here in Enon.

So let’s go.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Eric