Monday Preaching Blues
Posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
No one whom I have ever known as a great preacher has been happy with his own preaching. It seems that the task is too big and the time, talents, and intellect are just too small. Charles Spurgeon, the great pastor of a very large British congregation, suffered from very severe depression although he was, by all accounts, one of the greatest preachers the world has ever known.
Wise advice tells pastors to “never resign on a Monday.” No matter how bad one feels about the sermon yesterday, Tuesday always comes and a new sermon begs to be prepared. I suppose that we, like Chicago Cubs fans, are eternal optimists, hoping that next time something will get better; sometimes it does.
Then there are those rare and amazing days that almost every preacher, speaker, or teacher dreams of, but which come all to infrequently. Those days when the Spirit of God seems to infuse all that we do and everything works together in a way that we could have never expected, let alone planned, and we know that God has been there. We wish it could be that way all the time. We wish that we had some method or formula for making those days occur when we really need them. Alas, the Spirit, like the wind, blows where it will and try as we might we cannot control it. We are just thankful when we can be carried along by the breath and feel like a sailboat being whisked along rather than a broken tugboat being dragged. But this is Monday. Tugboat day. Tomorrow is Tuesday when perhaps, I pray, I will prepare and the Lord will visit in a special way, and the sails will be filled with breath from on high. Maybe . . .
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Comments
1crpc member:Monday, June 4th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
I thought yesterday’s sermon was wonderful. My whole family is truly being blessed by you filling the pulpit. Thank you for allowing God to use you for such a time as this.
2crpc members:Tuesday, June 5th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
My husband and I try to make notes of all the key points you allow God to make through you. It’s nice to have your notes posted, too, so that we may add from them some thoughts we may have missed as we were taking our own notes.
Monday is a special day for us, in which we can review again what God spoke to us through you.
We appreciate your transparency and obvious love for the Lord that you show when you are speaking. We continue to pray for you.
3Chris:Tuesday, June 5th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!
I am so excited every Sunday to see the Lord at work in and through you, you have become a great friend, blessing and encouragement.
I appreciate your faithfulness to the text and the labor in exegeting it and expounding it. Thank you for your example and hard work.
Num. 6:24-26
4Gunny Hartman:Tuesday, June 5th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
I feel your pain. I have my wife give me a critical evaluation after church and then listen to my badself via the miracle of the Internet Sunday afternoons.
On some occasions I’m contend, some frustrated, but rarely “happy” with the sermon.
For me, the blues are Sunday night, but I get back on the horse and start in that night with work toward the following Sunday morning’s sermon.
5Roy Miller:Monday, July 2nd, 2006 at 11:10 pm
I suppose other ministers have had this reaction too: you leave the pulpit thinking that everything clicked, that you had hit a home run… and you are in the only person in the room to think that.
Then the flip side, leaving the pulpit knowing that “Well, that was a meadow muffin!” Only to learn that the Holy Spirit had used a real stinker of a sermon to speak to many of the listeners.
Of course, there are also real stinkers that are real stinkers too, sad to say!