10 Sep 07 Preaching I
We dodged a furry bullet! Much to the dismay of the children, we were able to find a home for the cat. A family from Reese’s city league soccer team agreed to take the cat. We gently placed the cat into their care and ran!
We attended a 60th wedding anniversary celebration of one of our church members last night. They lived in Spur, Texas prior to making the trek Westward. I remembered preaching one time in Spur, Texas when I was in college. This memory triggered a retrospective, reminiscing look at my preaching career. So, I thought I’d spend a few posts sharing some of my memories and thoughts about preaching.
Besides being a baseball player, I can’t remember ever wanting to do anything else but preach. I know, for certain, this was due to watching my dad and having a front-row seat to his work. I do not ever remember him pushing me in the direction of ministry. And as it turns out, I think I would discourage my children from pursuing a career in preaching / pulpit ministry. The good thing about knowing what you want to do is you are able to focus early and not "waste" too much time getting there. The bad thing about knowing what you want to do (or at least thinking you know what you want to do) is you become one-dimensional and can feel stuck at times.
My first official sermon was delivered in Spanish when I was a young lad. We lived in Central America at the time and I was of junior high age. I don’t remember what I spoke about, I just remember being very nervous and worried about the timing up zipping up my bible at the right time. Bible covers with zippers were quite popular at that time and there was an art to zipping up the bible at just the right time.
Too soon and people stopped listening and starting turning in their songbooks for the invitation song. Too late and the sermon was an unfinished craft project.
The States side equivalent was when the preacher said, "in conclusion" or started working through "the plan" of salvation. Leadership Magazine carried a cartoon once that depicted a frumpy, grumpy man carving notches in the back of a church pew. The caption depicted his wife saying something like "would you stop making a mark every time he says ‘in conclusion’".
There’s a certain cadence - a rhythm - most of us know when the preacher is winding it down and for many it’s a beautiful thing.
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Yes, how DO those people know how to wake up at JUST THE RIGHT TIME? (even if you don’t say, “in conclusion…”
It’s true! As a kid I remember being amazed at how I consistently would wake up right before the preacher would start the invitation spiel. I thought I was psychic or something. If I could only get my own kids to stop climbing all over me during services now, maybe I could find out if I truly do have sleeping powers.
I “wound” it up big time this past Sunday. My last sermon. In the south, though, it was ALWAYS the “plan of salvation” that signaled a nearing of the end. Mattered not the subject of the sermon, or the text that was exegeted that day, every sermon ended the same … hear, believe …….. I’m looking forward to the other posts in this series.
My mom is still fond of the “invitation song.” I find it interestin that the last three times we’ve baptized anyone after a service has happened without the aid of a song. Amazing how we get hung up on that in the south.
I also remember preaching in the early days. Those poor people had to endure all of that. I just hope that I’ve improved and that our people are not thinking the same thing.
[...] friend, Randy, is writing a series of blogs reflecting his thoughts on preaching. (Click here if you’ve not read his first one.) Having written extensively on my journey, I am very [...]
After you’ve listened to as many sermons as most of us have, there’s just that built-in sensor that lets you know when a preacher is about to wind it up, even without the plan of salvation or “inconclusion.”
What’s always interesting to me is that we all reach for those songbooks (myself included!) We’ve been singing those same “invitation” songs for 100 years. Do we really need the book? Maybe so.
We had a rather inexperienced preacher within the last year who just messed everything up, though. The first time he spoke, I could have sworn at least 20 times he was getting ready to close, and he just kept on going. I don’t think he knew how to tie it together and let it go. But he improved!
I almost always limit my sermons to 20 minutes or less. I have no problem getting my point across in that amount of time and find that, if I go longer, I tend to muddy things up.
For that reason, people are often not expecting me to be finished and are usually pleasantly surprised. When people tell me I did good, they usually mean it was nice and short.