PREACHING

I praught on the Acts 2 text today at my teaching parish. It is Jubilee Sunday, so I tied in the Jubilee concepts into the sermon that I wrote. I must say that I thought that I would hate the act of preaching. I have found that this is not true. I love finding sermon illustrations and I love doing the exegesis that goes into a well thought out sermon. I think what really intimidates me is the idea of talking in a monologue for 10 minutes straight on my own with a group of people having their eyes on me. What intimidates me is having my thoughts and ideas out in the public domain which gives people the right to formulate opinions about me. So practice makes perfect, as I have spent a few hours at teaching parish building on my own this week practicing the sermon. This was preferable as I could get used to the flow that the enviorment of church offered.

I had a few nightmeres about the sermon. In one of the nightmeres, the pulpit was turned away from the congregation and I did not notice that. Then I couldnt remember what I had written and I had a hard time deciphering what I had written so I was engaging more with my sermon notes than with the congregation. Nightmere number two entailed sleeping till noon on Sunday. When I awoke with a start at 6am, an hour before my alarm clock, I rested assured that this was a bad dream.

I am happy to say that preaching itself went very well, however I felt like I had excessive nervous energy before the service. It really soothed me when my teaching parish supervisor took the time to pray with me before the service.

People loved my sermon. People told me that they like it when I preach. (this is the second time I preached) I am also told I come off as pretty confident and poised in front of everyone while doing this. (Contrary to the immense butterflies in my stomach and my desire to run away instead of having a crowd of people hear me speak). In fact, the president of my seminary attends this congregation and her family was visiting with her today. She approached me and said that she really enjoyed my sermon and she was glad that her children and grandchildren got to hear me preach. This is a pretty high compliment in my book.

I think that my teaching parish has a crowd of very educated people and I want to be sure to come off intellegent in my sermons as a result. Not only that there are retired clergy at this congregation as well. While these are all good people who just want to be a part of a healthy church community, there is also the wanting to make a good impression to them. It helps that they really seem to like me a lot and I have come to really care for them.

I think I finally figured out a formula that would explain my nervousness about preaching and public ministry roles:
(naturally introverted tendencies+self confidence as a growing edge)/trying to maintain appropriete professional boundaries = high tendencies towards nervousness+questioning self disclosure
Yet I have such a strong desire to be as close to the word and sacrament as possible despite all of this and a huge love of theology!!!