My first sermon was last Sunday October 23rd, and I had a little bit of trouble in the process. My church uses the Lectionary (a 3 year structure of biblical texts chosen for each week (typically one OT passage, one Psalm, one gospel, and one epistle, and two alternative texts.), and Last Sunday was from Year a Week 25 (proper time). Unfortunately when I started working on this sermon the two weeks prior to my Sunday to preach, I had chosen the OT text from Deuteronomy telling the story of the death of Moses, and a couple days later chose the Epistle text to go with it from I Thessalonians, only to realize the following Wednesday evening I had misread the epistle text and was using the passage for week 24. I was very frustrated, and felt defeated as I started over on a new sermon outline that needed to be turned into my site supervisor the next morning with the correct text.
I finished the outline later on Thursday, and submitted it to My supervisor in a fairly rough form. I really wasn't pleased with it at all, and was talking about things I didn't have a lot of confidence talking about. I had to turn in a manuscript of the sermon on Monday, but wasn't happy with what i was working with, so I stepped away form the sermon for a couple days.Through all of this, several phone conversations with Jas kept me going through my frustration and self pity.
Finally on Sunday, the day before my manuscript was due, I went to the ordination ceremony of one of the staff members here. I don't recall exactly what the sermon was about (which Im disappointed in because it was really good!), because I was distracted during and after because something the pastor said triggered something in me telling me to do my sermon on a topic I struggled with in my undergrad-- Altruism. I went back to my apartment after the reception and got to work spilling my stream of thought onto the page and by Monday morning was most of the way through my sermon. I did not finish it as expect on Monday, but did first thing Tuesday morning. I went from asermon I was not comfortable with to one that I had a connection to, and was very confident in. unfortunately, the original manuscript was close to a half hour long, and the congregation I am serving if used to 12-13 minute sermons so I needed to reduce it.
My part time internship has on several occasions spilled over into full time hours, this last week was not an exception. I spent about 20 total hours on my sermon at the beginning of the week, as well as about another 5 hours of meetings with other pastors in San Francisco and my supervisor and finishing the bulletin for my Sunday. This was followed by a busy later part of the week including the sermon reductions (my final product was still pretty long, about 22 minutes which I squeezed into 16 by talking fast [need to work on that part]), two wedding rehearsals, Saturday morning working the churches food pantry followed immediately by the elder deacon retreat, followed by two weddings, and then I finally got to go home after about a 14 hour day. During this time span on Saturday the little bit of congestion I had for the previous two weeks decided to turn into a full blown cold.
On Sunday I was happy to just get through my sermon. Monday morning, I was even worse, and my supervisor told me not to come in the rest of the week, so I went home and curled up in bed. At some point my door bell rang but I wasn't able to get to it before the person had left. Come to find out the next day I should have looked to the right at the chair I have outside because Jasmine had sent me a get well package of flowers and a teddy bear. Later that evening, a knock on my door, again I couldn't get there soon enough, but there was a package left on my door mat with "reasons I love you" stones inside as well as two whiskey snifters and some teraforma whiskey stones and a note congratulating me on my first sermon from "me." Gee, who could that be? Needless to say, these two things were wonderful and made a horrible day of feeling awful into a great day. I am starting to feel better bit by bit, missed my meeting this afternoon with a couple for premarital counseling (not MY meeting, but one I was going to shadow), and was told to not come to the wedding rehearsal tomorrow or wedding on Saturday.
I can't express how nice it is to have someone who will stand by my side when I am struggling with a sermon, or when I am sick, even when she is 1000 miles away. Im a pretty lucky guy.
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