I’m headed up to Baltimore for two days for our annual planning retreat. My all-time favorite bookstore is the Barnes & Noble in the Inner Harbor. Way too cool. It is a two level bookstore that used to be a power plant. Is it just me or do you think better thoughts when you’re surrounded by thousands of books?

We try to go into every year with an annual strategy for everything. I’ll be working on our marketing strategy, sermon strategy, staffing strategy, launch strategy and development strategy.

The sermon strategy is probably the most challenging and most important. Our goal is to walk away with a preaching calendar for 2007.