That love hate thing
There are some things in life that I both love and hate.
Preaching is one of them.
I love the intense rigor of preparing, of researching, of learning and of listening to God for what he wants me to say, but I hate that it rarely comes together as easily as I would like. I hate that during the week the passage of scripture or the topic consumes my thoughts and yet I love the end result of the process – the sense of having deeply engaged in scripture in a way that I normally wouldn’t unless I were preaching.
There are few things in life where I am perfectionistic, but preaching is possibly my achilles heel. A few years back I made a commitment never to spend longer than 8 hours on preparation ever again. I have pretty much maintained that but this week was one of the frustrating weeks where I couldn’t seem to pull my thoughts together coherently.
In the end it was all ok, but its a horrible feeling when you can’t seem to hear what God may be saying and when your own thoughts are lame and uninspiring.
I have come to realise that one of my core beliefs about preaching is that if we are going to do it, then it ought to be inspiring – not just informative – that seems to be one of the distinctions between the value of a larger gathering v a smaller one. But to be inspiring you need to be ‘inspired’.
And sometimes you just aren’t!
My preaching teacher told us with regard to preaching “the first fiftey years are the hardest….”
Keep Going Hamo
Gav
Comment by Gav — May 12, 2008 @ 10:12 pm