Lousy Preaching

In my brief time in ministry as a pastor (just over 3 years), I’ve preached a few good sermons (likely very few). I don’t know if it’s lazyness or if I’m just not a gifted preacher but I don’t hear a lot of "good sermon pastor" when people are walking out the door and shaking my hand after worship.

When I came to the congregation I’m serving, most of my week was spent trying to come up with a sermon. I’d pore over commentaries, read homiletics texts to try to remember how to write a sermon, and stare for ages at the computer screen pecking out a sentence here, a thought there, racking my brain to come up with even a slightly interesting illustration, and by the end of the week I’d have a sermon in place but not a very good one, at least in my opinion.

Lately I’ve decided that I can’t spend that much time coming up with a sermon for Sunday. There are other things to do in my ministry. So for some time now I’ve been cheating. I patch together things from various sermon helps, books, online stuff, and come up with something decent, certainly faster, but it doesn’t sound like me. I’m not satisfied. I feel like I’m cheating myself and my hearers. And I’m not hearing "good sermon pastor." I don’t need to hear that for my ego but it helps to know that what I’m saying means something to someone out there.

I was reading yesterday from The Evangelizing Church: A Lutheran Contribution (Augsburg Fortress, 2005) in a chapter by Richard H. Bliese called "Addressing Captives in Babylon." In part of this chapter he’s discussing a common lament "Since Jesus in no longer living with us bodily, how can we actually ‘hear’ his voice or ‘feel’ his healing touch?" Then he writes:

The heart of evangelical theology and preaching is that Christ is alive and present among us—concretely and unmistakably. Jesus’ word and presence are real, direct, graspable, and available for us—today! If faith means anything, it means grasping hold of a sermon or a forgiving word from a friend and declaring, "Amen, I believe these are Jesus’ words for me." Clarity on this point is vital for evangelizing. We do not act as if Jesus Christ were present in the Christian community. The gospel message is that Jesus, actually, is alive and is really present with us in Christian community as he promised. That’s the good news. It’s the great gift of salvation.

That’s a lot of pressure. Christ comes to us through Word and Sacrament and Christian Community. My words are to become The Word(?). I’ve always felt privileged to be able to share the Gospel with God’s people. I still do, but I’m kind of intimidated as well. It’s not that I don’t want to make the effort to write a good sermon. Maybe I’m just not a good preacher and that’s such an important part of a pastor’s ministry.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

Food Drive Challenge

There are a few things, some quite major things, that our Lutheran Church (ELCIC) and the Lutheran Church-Canada (LCC) don't agree on. We both call ourselves Lutheran but there's deep animosity between our churches.

Well, we're working together with the LCC church around the corner to help the poor in our community. Last year their church set a goal for themselves, to collect a certain amount of food for our local food bank. The shelves there get pretty empty around this time of year so they set their goal to help restock the shelves.

This year they thought it would be fun to involve another church. They called and asked if we'd be up for a friendly competition, to see which church could collect the most during the month of September. I said I'd think about it, maybe talk to some of the church council to see what they thought, then moments later I called back, having made the decision on my own, and said "Let's do it. It'll be fun and it can only help the food bank."

We've got two members of our congregation who faithfully bring a bag of canned goods for the food bank week after week. Others might bring something sporadically. More will bring something when we put a big push on around Christmas, Easter, or Thanksgiving or when there's an emergency because the cupboard is bare.

I've been encouraging the congregation week after week to bring their donations. Week One brought in 72 pounds (the weighing isn't really very accurate. I plop a box or bag of groceries on a bathroom scale but each time I place it on the scale I get a slightly different number). Week Two brought in 155 pounds, and Week Three we collected 240 pounds. At this point we contacted a local paper to see if they wanted to put something in about our competition. The other pastor, the chairwoman of their social ministry committee, and I had our picture taken at the food bank in front of a shelf with a few boxes of Mac and Cheese and a few cans of Pork and Beans. We were up to 467 pounds. They were up to 369 pounds.

I didn't think we could top the 240 pounds we collected in Week Three but this morning I weighed and delivered our collections from this past Sunday and in Week Four we had 309 pounds bringing our total to 776 pounds. The other church did even better than us this time with 365 pounds bringing their total to 734 pounds. They've certainly narrowed the gap and they're hoping some people will bring things to the church by Friday to see if they can catch up and/or overtake us.

I don't really care who wins. Neither of us are huge churches. Our average attendance on a Sunday is about 50 and they're somewhere in that neighbourhood too. Our little churches have colleced 1510 pounds total. It's awesome! This is neighbour love. This is thanksgiving for all that we've been given. This is help for the poor.

It's a shame that we have to have a food bank. I'd love it, and so would the volunteers who work there, if that food bank would go out of business. But there are working poor and people on social assistance in our community who always end up with more month left at the end of the money. Bishop Preibisch of the British Columbia Synod (http://www.bcsynod.org) reminded us recently that in 1990 the House of Commons unanimously resloved to "seek to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000" yet today more than one million Canadian children (nearly one child in six) still live in poverty. In November 2003 Prime Minister Paul Martin said,

"We must measure our progress by the standard of care that we set for the least privileged among us . . . . The true challenge of leadership is to rally a nation to its unfulfilled promise. To build a society based on equality, not privilege; on duty, not entitlement. A society based on compassion and caring; not indifference or neglect."

Nice words but where's the action? It looks like we'll be challenging our people to donate food to the food bank more and more. As Bishop Preibisch has said, "We can take up the Prime Minister's challenge by rallying our nation to fulfill the promise to end child poverty." Amen

No Barbershopping

The church that was holding the benefit concert for hurricane relief efforts ended up delaying the concert by two weeks and half of our quartet can't make it on that day so our group has disbanded before it even banded.

Sigh! I was looking forward to it. I thought it would be fun. Alas, perhaps it wasn't meant to be.

We have started choir practices at church though. My wife joined the choir this year. Now we're 5 sopranos, 2 altos (my wife doubled the size of the alto section), 1 tenor (me) and 1 bass. It's fun although our organist/choir director is somewhat challenged when it comes to organization. There have been threats of members quitting our already tiny choir because his lack of organization skills can be frustrating.

He's a good guy though. And the choir members like him. I like him too. Maybe it's an artistic thing because I've heard of other musicians lacking in that department.

Anyway, no quartet but I can sing with the choir. I gotta sing.

RSVP

Why don't people RSVP. I invited a bunch of pastors from my own denomination to my church for a morning of Bible Study, Fellowship, and Worship with Holy Communion. I asked them to let me know if they would be coming. A few sent their regrets but encouraged me to hold another gathering in the future. Some said they would come and most of those actually showed up. Most of those invited didn't bother to reply.

I had no idea how many would come so I made a perk with 24 cups of coffee, bought a carton each of lemonade and iced tea, cut up a coffee cake, prepared a worship service (today is Holy Cross Day), bought a freshly baked loaf of sunflower rye bread for Communion, and waited. Well, out of 25 invitees, 3 showed up.

We read and discussed 1 Corinthians 1.18-24, had some nice fellowship together, and ended by going into the church and sharing the Lord's Supper.

I was frustrated and disappointed. Some had valid reasons for being away and they let me know about them. One pastor who sent his regrets wrote,

Even if only a few gather, I encourage your action of bringing the clergy together and hope you will strive to establish a sense of “family” within our Conference. I have concluded that our denomination is in danger of self destruction, not caused by issues, but, by the growing sense of separation from one another.

We no longer care for, or are interested in each other. The rim has come off the wheel. While it would be easy to blame the lack of leadership direction and vision, I think it is much more fundamental. We are adrift because too many are paddling their own canoe with only the like minded in the boat. While one group calls the others "crazies," the other calls the other "heretics." We have stopped talking and have circled the wagons in different circles.

A gathering such as you have called is a mental health opportunity. However to unburden my soul I must know and trust my fellow clergy. Keep drawing us together. Unity can not be created by ignorance.

He's a retired pastor and I'll take what he says as wisdom from one who has seen a lot and been through a lot. I guess I just have to not give up. The three who came thanked me greatly for inviting them and planning the morning. That's encouraging anyway.

Sigh.

Barbershopping

This past Sunday morning, just before I left to walk across the driveway to church, the phone rang. I could tell by the ring that it was a local call, which could be bad news at that time on a Sunday morning. It wasn't. It was the local Baptist minister's wife calling to ask me to announce that they were planning a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina disaster relief for the evening of the 18th. I said I'd be happy to announce it and I did.

Then I got an idea in my head. After worship, on his way out the door, I stopped our organist and asked if he heard my announcement about the concert. He said if I wanted to sing he'd be happy to accompany me. I said my idea was to form a quartet to sing at the concert, me and him being two of the voices. He said he'd be all for it. I said I'd look for the other two voices.

First I called the Baptist minister's wife back and asked if the lineup for the concert was set or if she was still looking for acts. She said she was in the process of formulating the lineup and we could sing. She offered to let us sing 2 songs. Okay. Now to find a quartet.

I called the organist from an Anglican church 20 minutes down the highway and asked if he was interested in singing and if he could find a fourth. He thought it would be fun and when he mentioned it to his priest he got the impression he might be interested, otherwise he could find another man from one of the choirs he directs to be the fourth voice in our quartet. If Anglican priest wants to sing with us we could be called "Two Pastors And Their Organists."

I'm getting excited about this! I love to sing. I'm leaving the song selection up to the two organists. Maybe I'll suggest something Bach. I love Bach. He is the 5th evangelist for us Lutherans after all. We'll see how it all works out.

Back To The Old Routine

Well, the kids are back at school and I have to set the alarm again. All summer I didn't have to get up until the sun on my face drove me out of bed, and even then I could hide in a shadow somewhere for a while. Now the kids are back to school and I have to get up with them.

T is in grade 7 now. New teacher but the same kids. J is in grade 5, her first year in the Extended French program, and she's one of 12 kids from her old class and 17 new kids coming from other schools for this special program. A is in grade 2. He's got the same grade 2 teacher that J had but his best friend is in a different class this year.

My wife says that about the only good thing about having the kids at school is that when she cleans part of the house it's clean until at least 4 o'clock when the come through the door, kick their shoes off anywhere, dump their backpacks anywhere else, and start making themselves an afternoon snack.

The morning routine is that the alarm wakes me at 7:30. After the news, sports, and weather I wake any kids who aren't up yet, go downstairs and make them breakfast (they can do it themselves but they're lazy), have my own breakfast, chase anyone who hasn't made their way back upstairs to get up there and brush their teeth and get dressed. While we're upstairs making ourselves presentable my wife has had about 15 minutes more sleep and comes downstairs and packs lunches. By this time it's getting close to time to leave and I'm yelling at the slowpokes chasing them downstairs where they search for shoes and tell us at the last minute that they need some field trip form signed, or some money for something or other. I walk the kids to school, wait until the youngest is safely inside (I don't worry so much about the older ones anymore) then come to the office and get to work.

I miss the lazy pace of summer already, and it's only been one day. School's only the beginning. Tomorrow night is the first congregational council meeting since June 1. I convinced them when I came here 3 years ago this past June that we don't need to meet in July or August and they went for it. Thursday night choir practice starts again. This year my wife is joining the choir. T is old enough to babysit her younger siblings for the hour or 90 minutes of choir practice, and besides, we live next door to the church. The July and August calendars were so beautifully empty, and September is all scribbled in already.

But, there's good news awaiting us only a month away. Yesterday, Labour Day, the last day of summer, J was crying because she didn't want it to end. We were planning to spring the good news on them this morning but seeing her tears was just too sad. We've been making plans and reservations for months without the kids knowing. Yesterday afternoon I told the kids that I heard DQ calling so we went for ice cream. My wife doesn't go for ice cream much so she stayed home. When we returned she was ready with the video camera to capture their reaction when they came in and saw a new t-shirt for each of them along with a card that said:

Walt Disney World

Been There, Done That, Going Back

October 6, 2005

We are all so excited! We can't wait! It's exactly a month away. Four weeks from this Thursday. I don't know how long the wait is going to be. It's really not a long time from now but it's going to seem like forever.