Proclaimer Blog
The sound of silence
I worked out a while ago that in the last ten years of ministry I've preached something like 800 sermons, a pretty typical number for a sole-in-charge pastor, I guess. Not surprisingly, amongst that number there have been a fair few duds (more than I care to admit) and messages that could have been preached a whole heap better. But the glory of preaching is that it is not just a carefully crafted speech which must be delivered word perfect, pitch perfect. It is not (ooh, this is topical!) the King's Speech.
Of course, delivery matters. Technique is not to be despised. But on the whole, preaching is more than this. And, to my absolute humility (and grateful relief) I am often able to preach better than I know or deserve. And, as it happens, preaching regularly in a local church means mistakes matter less anyway. The people should love you, warm to you, enjoy your ministry like a family member. Word-perfect is not a pre-requisite.
Thank God.
This was brought home to me this last Sunday. I've been preaching a short series on Genesis 1. Four sermons on the God who reveals himself as the God who creates, the God who relates, the God who participates and the God who anticipates (this last one next week). My sermon last Sunday had a point about common grace and what a great doctrine it is – warmly (I hoped) applied in terms of not being anxious (Matthew 6) and in other ways. But in my last minute prayer and prep I realised that I had made a glaring omission.
Jesus applies common grace in another way in Matthew 5. There, Christians are exhorted to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them – because God is a God of common grace and we should not just glory in the doctrine, but practise it too. Saying grace at the dinner table should naturally lead to us praying for those against Christ and his people. Just in time I scrawled a couple of words on my notes and had in my head how I would frame it into words.
Except when the moment came I completely forgot the point! I stared at my notes trying to make sense of what I had scribbled. It left me completely. I stopped. I apologised. People smiled. There was a pause – a long pause, I thought. The sound of silence. Then suddenly it all came flooding back and I was fine.
As I say, not the King's Speech. But that's fine I think. The silence was probably shorter than it seemed to me. No one seemed to notice, and it gave me time to gather my thoughts and words. Oh, the wonder of preaching to people who know and love you!