Proclaimer Blog
Preaching through distraction
Most preachers from time to time (and some all of the time) have to preach through distractions. My old church used to be in the Heathrow flightpath and at 11.15 every morning (just as the sermon was getting underway) Concorde would take off. Boy, was I glad when they scrapped that thing. I just stopped for a minute each week and we all chuckled together. There was no way I could compete.
In some ways those kinds of distractions are easier to deal with. They’re regular and the congregation all know what is going on. It’s the one off things that hit harder: someone wanders around; someone falls ill; the PA stops working; someone dies (it does happen!).
The preacher can’t really prepare for these kinds of things. They can’t all be legislated away. Sometimes a wrong reaction from the preacher actually destroys the work of the sermon: I remember one very gentle preacher raising his voice and telling his congregation that they should be less interested in what was going on at the back and more interested in him and what he was saying. True – but the way he said it made sure that everyone turned round!
On the whole, I think being up front about what is going on is fine. People understand that. We need to react to particular situations in different ways. I have – before now – said to people we’re going to pause and pray whilst the situation gets sorted out, then got someone to come and give me an update, because I know that’s what everyone is thinking about anyway.
One of the hardest things though is that we, as preachers, can lose our stride. There is something about the preaching monologue that means, once it is interrupted, makes us lose our train of thought or expression. It’s where a good set of notes helps. But there’s more to it than that.
I wonder if what we really need is to expect interruption. At one spiritual level, Satan longs to disrupt the preaching of the word. We should expect as preachers to face all kinds of spiritual attack and should be praying against them, but also unsurprised when they happen. For there is nothing worse than a startled preacher: his people are going to be startled too.