Preach The Word
A couple of months ago, I was asked by our associate pastor to step in for him and preach this fall. I come from a short-but-wide line of preachers, and despite my last time in a pulpit being about 25 years ago, I agreed to step up. We're in the middle of a series on Spiritual Practices, and I picked "Silence" as a topic from a category about self-denial.1
For inspiration, our associate sent me this video. I had a really hard time not laughing:
My week was this past Sunday. If you're at all interested in hearing me talk about being quiet and still, you can do so here. I think I set a recent record for shortest sermon by keeping it under 25 minutes.2
This was an interesting experience for me. I watched my parents go through the sermon preparation process every week from as early as I can remember through leaving home to go to college. I definitely didn't appreciate it then, and I think I only barely do now. I haven't done much public speaking in my life that didn't involve singing in one way or another, and thankfully this wasn't a very controversial topic on which to expound holy scripture... also I knew 98% of the people sitting in front of me. The barriers were relatively low.
I'm speaking at a conference in about six weeks. More on that another time.. I expect that experience to be far more nerve-wracking than this was.