Saturday, January 10, 2009

Preaching

My friend Matt over at The Pocket Mardis has a post about not memorizing his sermon for this Sunday and learning to not feel the need to be perfect in the service of God.

Back before I became a hospice chaplain I was a Baptist preacher at a small Baptist church in a small town in Georgia.  I was the only full-time staff and I preached every Sunday.  What I learned is that to survive the pressure of preaching every Sunday, I needed to befriend my own mediocrity. 

In a month of 4 Sundays I learned that one sermon would be really good, 2 wold be okay, and 1 would suck.  It seemed like no matter how much effort or time went into the sermon the math would stay the same.  It helped me to recover from a bad sermon because I knew that I had a good sermon in me, and it helped me from getting too excited when I preached good one because I knew how bad I could be.

No comments:

Post a Comment