Tag: Preaching

  • The sermon you don’t preach

    Today was our family harvest thanksgiving services in both churches. It was also communion in one. I had chosen some familiar harvest hymns. We had a short video from our Messy Church – Messy Harvest morning from a couple of weeks back. I’d even dropped one of the hymns to make the service a little…

  • One down, two to go

    This little stint of pulpit supply has offered me a more interesting reflective opportunity than I first thought it would. As previously mentioned, I’m ‘optimising my time’ by using the same service in three different places (albeit with some revision of hymns and sermon duration). The first one was delivered today and I wasn’t entirely…

  • 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 other…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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 a…

  • 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 5…

  • 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 lectionary…

  • 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 heard…