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Journals

Funstuff

Let me just repeat that.

Many moons ago (well, it seems like it anyway) I agreed to do three pulpit supply dates in August. My thinking was that by the end of July my dissertation would be progressing well and things might be easing off a little. Aye right!

Now, one of those churches uses the lectionary and the [...]

July 24th, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: Bible, Church | 4 comments

Stories (again)

Apologies up front – this is very much a ‘thinking out loud’ blog entry and may well descend into a bit of a rant. You have been warned! Even so, I’d appreciate your thoughts.

On Sunday I was leading the whole service and the choice of hymns, reading, sermon, etc was entirely mine. Over Advent we have spent a bit of time in Luke’s gospel and finished off towards the end of Luke chapter 2. I decided to pick up from that point and deal with a passage that isn’t (in my experience) covered very often – the incident of Jesus, as a boy, doing a bunk from the family group and being found in the Temple. I felt it fitted well with a Ne Year start as I believe the passage does a number of things, including giving a glimpse of Jesus’ future life, ministry and purpose but also leaving us with a challenge also very appropriate for the beginning of a new year and a new session – where would we expect to find Jesus if we went looking for Him?

Continue reading Stories (again)

January 4th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Bible, Church, Faith, Placement, Theology | 11 comments

From personal experience

Yesterday I had the opportunity to lead the whole service in my placement church. Not a big problem – it’s something I’ve done many times. That said, being somewhere new has the added pressures of not knowing what they know, not knowing how recently they may have covered the chosen passage (an advantage of following the lectionary), whether you are about to utterly contradict previous teaching or whether you’re getting too close to personal/pastoral issues. On the plus side, such pressures do help focus the mind and maybe force you to take that bit extra care of how something is worded.

Continue reading From personal experience

November 16th, 2009 | Tags: , , , | Category: Church, Faith, Placement | 6 comments

Free to move

I was taking the service this evening in my home church and it was a very odd experience. I’ve not preached there for quite a while and I was surprised at just how ‘different’ it felt from my placement. The evening service is a slightly different format anyway, but that’s not the issue. There’s [...]

April 19th, 2009 | Tags: , , | Category: Church, Placement | 4 comments

Carry on regardless

I was preaching today at my placement church and it was one of those times when you really wish it was someone else in your place. Everything started off well enough but one young lad had been brought back in from junior church by his mum a little earlier. That was fine until about [...]

March 1st, 2009 | Tags: , | Category: Bible, Christianity, Church, Placement, Theology | 4 comments

Lectionary thoughts

Following on from today’s other blog entry, I was thinking about the lectionary. Today’s readings from Amos, 1Timothy and Luke were kind to me. There was a connection that could be made between them and, more importantly, one that could be used at today’s Harvest Thanksgiving service.

The thing I struggle with about the [...]

September 23rd, 2007 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Blogging | 4 comments

Every second counts…

Well, I did it!

I created a 15 minute sermon after a bit of judicious pruning. Could I have said more? Probably. Should I have said more? Probably not. What I delivered I think worked but I suspect it was a very different style of sermon from usual. Hard to say since I’ve only [...]

September 23rd, 2007 | Tags: , , , | Category: Blogging | 8 comments