Category: Preaching Notes
Voice Lessons
Reading this article by Will Willimon reminded me that preaching is a craft. I work on my words. Minister’s often hear me ask, “How are your words?” or “How do you feel about your words last week?” I remember looking out and seeing Rev. Dr. Joey Jeter and Rev. Dr. Kenneth Teegarden in the pews at the TCU chapel. It was Intro to Preaching. They were critically kind and I’ve gotten better at my craft, preaching and youth ministry. I use a manuscript for sermons and notes when I keynote. It is something that I work at and take very seriously. If you are currently preaching each week or in seminary Willimon’s words are worthy of a few minutes.
Voice Lessons
by William H. Willimon | January 27, 2011 | The Christian CenturyIt isn’t just that so many Protestants exalt preaching above other pastoral arts. The challenge is preaching itself. Proclaiming the gospel demands an interplay of highly developed emotional-spiritual-physical-intellectual qualities. Walking naked down Main Street while playing a harmonica is nothing compared to the personal exposure required to talk about God for 20 minutes to a group of people who have been, all week long, avoiding even the barest mention of God.
These reflections were inspired by my watching the film The King’s Speech, which is about King George VI of England, a miserably shy, stammering man who is thrust unwillingly onto the world stage. The movie casts the coming of World War II as a confrontation involving public speaking: Hitler’s histrionic elocution is a dramatic contrast to the king’s quavering, high-pitched voice. All of England awaits a reassuring royal word. George’s wife, Elizabeth, slyly sets up a visit with Lionel Logue, the oddball, self-trained Australian speech therapist. “My job is to help you find your voice,” Logue says to the king.
A Prayer for a Day’s Labor
On Sunday morning I left the house without the pastoral prayer that I had created. The pastoral prayer or community prayer time is an important part of worship so I spend time crafting words. I pieced together some of the words from my short-term memory for Sunday morning, but print them here.
Adapted from Eleanor Roosevelt’s Evening Prayer and A Prayer for Labor Day from Prayer in America
Let us pray:
Creator, who has set a restlessness in our hearts and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Set our eyes on far off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength. Deliver us from the fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness people hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new.
Blessed be the works of Your hands, O Holy One.
Blessed be these hands that have touched life, and have nurtured creativity.
Blessed be these hands that have held pain and that have embraced with passion.
Blessed be these hands that have planted new seeds. tended gardens, and harvested ripe fields.
Blessed be these hands that have cleaned, washed, mopped, and scrubbed after so many sometimes with no thanks.
Blessed be these hands that have taken blood pressure, dispensed meds, and healed.
Blessed be these hands that have closed in anger, become knotty with age, hands that are wrinkled and scarred from doing justice.
Blessed be these hands that have reached out and been received, hands that hold blankets, bottled water, and MRE’s; hands that dig wells and write checks, and open us to embrace the other: these hands hold promise of the future.
Blessed be the works of Your hands through our hands, O Lord . . . our rock and our redeemer. Amen.