Practicing to Preach

Since I now preach only once a month, that gives me lots of time to prepare. Naturally, I always have my sermon prepared at least two weeks in advance. Today, I am practicing it out loud, as I always have. There was a time when I always taped it, and played it back and listened to it. Inevitably, there were parts that needed changing. But believe it or not, in today's technological downloading world, it is very hard to buy a good portable tape recorder. When my last one died, I tried, but found the quality to be very poor.

The senior pastor delivers his message 'off the cuff', or with no outline or notes. He's good at it. Very gifted. When doing that, there is always the danger of being repetitive or worse, not being able to find your ending, your way out. He's always able to tell when it's time to stop, even though he wears no watch. While I do admire that, I think, as a writer, I'd still rather find just the right illustrations and words and polish them and put them together in just the right way for the maximum impact.

It is the 'writer person' and whatever talents she might have, whom God called into service, and whose gifts God claimed. It is through the writing process that I most deeply experience the presence of God in my life, in ways that I have often called 'mystical'.

I have to keep reminding myself that it was not because God wanted me to be an extemporaneous speaker that I was called. God wants me to be who I am. God has always functioned through my hard work and dedication, my attention to the story, the words, the Word.

I try to remember: I am who I am.