Skip to main content

a minor accomplishment with a fizzle

I have preached through my first sermon series.  I completed the entire Sermon on the Mount as it is in Matthew 5 to Matthew 7.  I have said more than once, while at church, "If I get nothing else from my time as being a pastor... if I quit right now and didn't preach again, the things I have learned preaching through this amazing sermon are priceless to me."  And I mean that.  I blogged my way, verse by verse, a few years ago, but preaching through it changed everything.

So, as I approached the end of this series it was feeling like a bang, but when the day finally came it felt like a fizzle.  My brain felt scattered, the main point felt misconstrued, the message was simply missed.  I won't go into detail, but I just wish I could go back and re-do that message.  The sad thing is that it was such a simple portion of scripture with such a distinct, easy to find application.

What got in the way?  My pride?  My laziness?  A momentary loss of brain functionality?  I don't know.  I just know it felt like a fizzle.

I did have one person come up to me afterwards to ask about the message.  Something from that passage had pin-pricked them, and they wanted to talk about it.  This person waited  until everyone else had left the church  just so they could talk to me.  It was my oldest son.  That was a bang for me and it warmed my heart.

Preaching isn't the only thing that I am supposed to do as a pastor, but I am not going to turn this post into an explanation of the pastoral role.  If I did that I would have to go into all of the multitude of fizzles that I have done in all of the other areas of my pastoral role. I simply wanted to point out that I fizzled this Sunday preaching and that is a little depressing.

There you go.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Seed and The Soil of Education (New Learning Project Part 1)

(This is my entry for the first part of my project for my New Learning course that I am taking.) Introduction Corn Fields in Illinois I have lived the majority of my life in the Midwest: mid-state Illinois to be specific. Where I live, farming is everywhere. My grandparents and great-grandparents on both sides of my family were farmers. My dad grew up on a farm and owned farmland, well into my own adulthood. But, even if it wasn’t in the family, I still would have been surrounded by farming. You can’t go more than a mile outside of my city’s limits without encountering miles and miles of fields. Most of our highways, and even interstates, are located between acres of farmland.

This too shall pass...

Gam zeh ya'avor (Hebrew) "This Too Shall Pass" Welcome!  According to Google Analytics, this is by far the most visited post that I have ever written.  If someone comes here from a search engine, most of the time they are looking for " this too shall pass quote " or simply " this too shall pass " on Google or one of the other search engines. I am sure that most of the time visitors are looking for the originations of this quote, but I have to wonder, why is this quote on people's minds? Why are they pondering the passing of events?   Here is my thought: It is probably because most of us have realized that the adult life is much harder than we ever imagined it to be. There is more pain and more sorrow than we had ever imagined as children, but we have learned that time keeps ticking. And as time continues to flow things pass. In fact, even the really big things and the really hard things will still pass. If you are here because you are thinking ...

The Minnesota Crime Commission wrote:

Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He's dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.