When long term planning fails...
I believe in long term planning when it comes to sermon series'. And no, I don't believe that "the Holy Spirit works best when we don't plan and stand up and wing it on Sunday morning"... God's plan for salvation has been "in play" for thousands of years so I'm pretty sure God's cool with long term planning. I think long term sermon planning is really helpful because it allows you to gather illustrations and media over a period of weeks and months instead of days. Sometimes you have to make adjustments though...
In the series Summer at the Shore I have been talking about "encounters" that Jesus had with people on the shore that completely changed their life. Next week (June 15th) I had in my "plan" to talk about the woman with the "issue of bleeding" from Mark 5. I was going to use a clip from "House"...it would have been cool. I say would have been cool because I realized earlier this week that the "third Sunday in June" turns out to be Fathers day... NO WAY AM I GOING TO TRY TO TURN THE WOMAN WITH "BLEEDING ISSUES" INTO A FATHERS DAY MESSAGE!! Yikes. Adjustments have been made...