I have now added to the various hats I wear, web master of Immanuel Lutheran's Web site, the church with whom Reconciler and Holy Trinity has space sharing agreements: Reconciler uses their side chapel and the community inhabits the old parsonage. I have not worked with an organization to get its web presence up to speed so I was a little nervous. but now that I have startedI think it will go well and i really enjoy the work. At the moment still trying to help them know exactly what they want out of their web site. It has been a week now since I started. Initially I am just updating what they have and making some minor changes, while a graphic designer works on some ideas for the new look of the web site, which it needs. In this instance this new hat is a paying gig so that is good.
It has meant more juggling of things already: so I was writing my sermon for Sunday right up to two hours before church. That isn't all that rare except that this time I when I went to bed Saturday night I still didn't have an outline (I was sick again which didn't help) I ended up quoting George Macdonald in the sermon. Sorry, no manuscript to post, and the notes I fear are only comprehensible to me, and only partially to me after I preached the sermon. Kate said it was one of my better sermons and most everyone else seemed to engage it so that is just another one of those cases where I am by the grace of God able to pull a sermon out of a semi organized set of notes. I am finding preaching to be ever more difficult the better I get at it. I am finding it harder to prepare a sermon and to deliver one. I enjoy the challenge and find preaching very rewarding just didn't expect that it get harder the longer I did this.
You know, about a year in to my ministry here in Albert City, a ministry where I was writing sermons each and every week, I hit a wall. It became very difficult for me to write. I kept going back to the same things, and felt that I was writing the same sermon over and over. And I struggled as I prepared these sermons. This lasted about two or three months, then I broke through this, and ever since, sermon preparation has been a joy for me. Oh, sometimes it is hard as I struggle with a thought that I feel is important, but I'm not sure how to share it with the congregation. Or perhaps I do go back to the same well occasionally, returning to regular themes that show their head again and again. But overall, the sermon writing process has been really a joy for me, once I got through that wall that was so difficult the first year in.
ReplyDeleteI've talked to other pastors who have had similar experiences. I wonder, since you haven't been preaching weekly, if the wall just took you longer to get to?
Gavin,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your experience. I have wondered if some aspect of what I am struggling with is the infrequency with which I am asked to preach at Reconciler. Though I did hit a wall at some point about 1 year and a half ago, so a little over a year after starting Reconciler when we had our first growth spurt at Reconciler. We have had another one in the past 6 months.
the good news on this front is that I preached again this past Sunday and the preparation was a little easier.
Also, my struggle is not feeling like I am preaching essentially the same message or feeling in a rut but of presenting a coherent message out of the various ideas the lectionary texts of a given Sunday emerge for me as I prepare the sermon.
I understand the struggle, as I felt the same one myself. I guess, talking about being in the rut was just one aspect. In truth, it was just sort of like I was pulling teeth to get thoughts out on paper. Maybe I wasn't connecting myself with the scripture as much, or maybe it was the opposite, that I was connecting too much with it and it was too personal and therefore not a message that I was comfortable sharing with a group.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways it wasn't about the inspiration, or the interaction with the scripture, though. Instead, it was about trying to organize thoughts, or even words on the screen in front of me as I wrote. I truly think it was more of a writers block for me than anything else. And then it ended.
Oddly enough, when I take a week off from preaching, it is harder for me the next week again to get back into it.