Preaching for the First Time

Last Thursday around noon I got a voicemail from one of the elders of my church wanting to know if I could preach on Sunday. My initial response was to say no - thinking that I just wouldn't have time to prepare knowing that I would be working at the shelter that night, giving me only Friday afternoon and Saturday to prepare ... and oh by the way my wife would be working both of those afternoons. Speaking of my lovely wife, when I mentioned the message to her, she promptly encourages me to say yes. After all, I had just spent a couple of weeks on a rather large paper exegeting a passage from Mark, and I already had created a sermon outline for the passage. After a small amount of thought, I decided to accept the offer.

I went through the process of revamping my paper into something I could preach on, and with the limited amount of time I had I was getting a little nervous about not having some quiet time away from the apartment to practice the actual delivery. Any attempts I made in the apartment were short lived and pretty much non-productive - it just felt as if I were reading everything and it didn't feel at all natural. Truth be told - I've never done much "practicing" for any "public" speaking I've done in the past ... I basically just work it out in my head and then go with it. But I knew this wasn't something that I could "just go with." So I got up early Sunday morning and headed to church to practice. My hope was to go through it twice before anyone else showed up; instead I went through it once and felt pretty good about it, so I decided to leave it at that.

When the time came in the service to get up and preach, it all came pretty easy. I went out on Saturday and bought a new camcorder so I could record it and review it later ... as well as share with all the folks back home. Surprisingly, I actually didn't even think about it being on - which I guess was a good thing. I also thought I would be a lot more nervous, but I guess after spending lots and lots of hours standing in front of classroom teaching, it just came naturally.

It wasn't a perfect presentation. Looking back there were things I wish I would have said differently. There are things I wanted to include but forgot. I would have liked to been able to add a little more creativity to the presentation, but with the limited time I just needed to get something presentable. All in all, the Lord was very gracious to me in all of this. Things could have gone much worse ... which could have led me back to the business world forsaking this whole Venture!

If you'd like to see the video, drop me an e-mail and I'll send you a link. Once you're on the list, you'll be able to see all future sermons that I'm able to record.

Thanks to everyone for all your prayers! The level of comfort I felt through this whole process was evident of the grace that came from your prayers!

The End of Fall '09

This past Monday I handed in my final assignments for the Fall term. It is always a great feeling to be done, even though just a week or two before it was hard to imagine finishing everything that needed to be done. It has been a difficult adjustment since June, knowing that I would have to lower my academic standards in order adequately focus on family needs. Some further adjustments may still be in order, but it was extremely helpful to have a wife, not to mention some seminary professors, who encouraged me to do just that. To have a professor say something like, "If loving your new baby well means handing in only a reasonable paper, then that's what you should do." After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I breathed a rather large sigh of relief. Needless to say, there will likely still be some shock when the grades come out, but I have a few weeks to prepare for them. I'm done with classes until February, but I will be working on finishing some equivalency work that will allow me to upgrade some of my M.A. credits to M.Div credits.

My work at the shelter is going well. The first two weeks were a little rough, but I'm feeling more comfortable with the goings-on there and the past several weeks have been incident free. I've had some wonderful volunteers helping me out each week, and that makes things go smoothly too. I'd still like to encourage everyone to find a way to donate some time this Christmas season to helping out those less fortunate - trust me, you'll be glad you did.

Our newest addition to the family continues to do very well. She is growing quickly and sleeping longer at night, which Mommy especially appreciates. My other two kids are learning what it means to be a good big brother and sister. We've had a few close calls when the older two get playing a little too rough ... hopefully we are past those episodes now. Yesterday, my older daughter and I had our first real Daddy/Daughter Date. We went to McDonald's (one with a playland) for lunch and then went to see The Princess and the Frog afterwards. We had a great time - although the movie itself had some things in that I wasn't too fond of ... once you see it, you'll know. But the point was to be able to spend some quality time with her and we certainly were able to do that. My son continues to do well in school. He's taking on more responsibility around the house: he takes the trash to the dumpster, he feeds his baby sister when I need to make dinner, and he keeps a good eye on his other sister when we send them outside to play.

My wife and I would like to say a special "Thank-you" to all our friends and family for the wealth of Christmas cards, notes of encouragement, gifts, and especially the prayers we've received over the past couple of months. We know ourselves to be truly blessed by God to have people like you in our lives!