Sunday, July 11, 2010

Blogging during the sermon

We are in small town Sask this Sunday morning of our holidays and we have gathered with 14 others in this rural church to worship God.

These small town churches scattered across the prairies are places of simple corporate worship sometimes like stepping back in time.

The young pastor is nervous as he leads us, but he is doing his best to be faithful to his recent seminary training.

The music is a collection of old hymns and a few choruses from the 1970s accompanied by a hundred year old piano. The words of the choruses are projected on the wall with an overhead projector and the only audio amplification for the leader is one mic they set the volume for at the beginning of the service and leave alone.

But the 17 gathered worshipers rise to the occasion and sing with gusto so that the songs echo around this small brown panel clad room.

The sermon is good especially given the difficult context and though I don't know his training I'm feeling like we need to help our seminaries train our pastors for places like this. Somehow feels like his well prepared message is made for a different crowd.

I also feel again this responsibility to prepare and preach well. May God forgive us as pastors for not doing the hard work necessary to be able to preach well.


Service is over now.
I always wanted to do this but usually I'm busy working Sunday mornings.

God was here in this little prairie church this morning.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds familiar...hope you and L didn't scare the young preacher too much by your presence !

    And, get you, blogging during a sermon, whatever next ?! Enjoy the rest of your time off.

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  2. So how would you teach the preaching bit? Just curious. What would you emphasize, what should NOT be done? How did his well prepared message miss the crowd? What can you teach me from this?

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