love letters from the edge

There are people who like to study up on the text they will preach to a congregation.  Then there are people who like the act of preaching.  There is much overlap and nuance between these 2 groups – they are by no means opposites.  While I am almost always astonished by what I learn when I study a text, I must confess to enjoying the act of preaching more than I do the researching to preach.  I have found this is a careful balance to maintain so that I don’t end up preaching internet forwards or chicken schlock for the sole due to a lack of study.  (Ok, really.  This isn’t going to happen.)

BUT: If you hear me preach, and you detect soft, fluffy filling, call me on it, would ya?

My internship has had me on a pretty tight preaching schedule.  I think I’ve preached some 20 sermons thus far, and have many more to go.  So, I’m still establishing what my habits around getting ready to preach are.  So far, I’ve noticed a feeling that accompanies me each time I sit down to try and start to write the actual sermon.  It’s part anxiousness, part excitement, part dread, part ….well, I don’t know.  It’s a feeling that keeps me on my toes and, literally, on the edge of my seat as I write.  Usually, I feel like I am on an egdge when I am writing a sermon. It’s not a comfortable feeling, which I think is critical.  I wonder if you’d feel it, as a listener, if I were lounging, feet propped up, waxing on and on about grace and the like.  ”Isn’t it just, well, …super?”

It’s like I am writing a love letter each week, but a love letter that reads like a sweeping, epic drama.  It’s a love letter that includes heartache, betrayal, forgiveness, and redemption all mixed up with the mundane, the absurd, the tedious, the ordinary, and the extraordinary.  Just ready the Bible sometime.  It’s all in there – sex, drugs, and rock & roll.

“Preach like there’s someone who is about to die and is going to hear it.”  This was the advice given in my first introduction to preaching class.  It seems sitting on the edge of my wooden chair is the least I can do.

What do you think about preaching?  Or about sermons you hear?  How do you write?  What do you anticipate as a hearer?  When do you want to stand and clap?  When do you want to throw something at the preacher?

k. aas

This is sort of how worship felt. Hello? Can anyone hear me?

Chaos.  This last Wednesday was extra chaotic. Extra wild.  Extra fun, really.  Maybe it was because it was the big Christmas dinner and then a tour of the “Lights on the Lake” display.  Worship was a scream.  Let me break it down for you:

1. I waited until the usual suspects had made their way to the sanctuary, up from dinner in the basement.  There is always a group that wanders in late, so that’s no matter.
2. Only this time, lots of people came in late.  Like during the sermon late.
3. I was about to begin my sermon with an analogy about pointing (it’s not polite to point, but why do we do it…) when Mary, in the front row points at me and says “You have dimples.”
4. There is usually some amount of noise going on during worship, during the sermon.  Cell phones ringing, cell phone conversations, other conversations.  It’s been good practice for me.  But this last Wednesday really pushed it.  I was happy I had a pretty complete manuscript in front of me, or I’m not sure I could have held a coherent thought.
5. What noise, you ask?  Laughing, talking, walking around.  Most sit pretty close to the front and I stand in the isle, so it’s not like the noise is far away.  And these are the adults.  The kids are in children’s church.
6. Pretty soon, there are 4 people in the front 2 pews practically jumping out of their seats to tell me that my supervisor had fallen asleep.  I had noticed, and kept plowing ahead.  Am I still preaching?  I must be…
7. Somehow, everyone quiets down.  The last few sentences of my sermon were getting to the point, and suddenly it seemed I had them again.  They finished with me, heard what really mattered, quite honestly.
8. We somehow make it through communion, with the kids joining us, and on into the journey of Lights on the Lake.

Later on, as my supervisor apologizes for his public nap, he says “well, now you can blog that your supervisor fell asleep during your sermon.”

Check.

Signing off,

Laura K. Aas(e)

choosing hymns

 

i hope you get this one stuck in your head!

I always sort of dread picking hymns for the coming Sunday, especially when I’m not sure which way the sermon is going to go.  And today is sort of the day the hymns need to be chosen.  Today is even a bit late, really.  And I don’t like  the added pressure of the potential of picking a dud.  That potential is high, if you’ve ever thumbed your way through a hymnal.

 

But then I get to flipping through the worship book (don’t get my seminary worship professor started – it’s not a hymnal, people- it’s a worship book), and checking with nifty hymn-sifting devices on ye ‘ole internet(s), and I find myself site-humming the melodies and even singing the acutal words.

And then that’s when I remember:  I like choosing hymns.  Church nerds are like that.