preaching

I’m not one who has any natural inclination to vulnerability, but the suggestions I read that clergy vulnerability should be exercised in the pulpit of all places really make me cringe. I’ve asked Carol Howard Merritt for her thoughts on vulnerability as an element of clergy self-care.

My sixth-grade sex ed teacher held up a worksheet and apologized: “I know this is sort of unromantic.” Books on preaching can leave us similarly cold.

What I miss most is not the preaching itself but the preparing, the rhythm, the demand, and the discipline.

After I preach, I want to relive the moment over and over, soaring away on an ego-driven high. Beforehand, I hide in the bathroom.

Reading Amy-Jill Levine's Short Stories by Jesus, I kept wishing she had published it earlier. It would have saved me some mistakes in the pulpit.

Craddock let the word out that he would be available at no charge for preaching and teaching. Only non-seminary graduates should attend.

After years of wrestling, I settled in a predominately white church. My logic was this: if every white person concerned about racial justice leaves white churches, then there will be few women or men there to help. This Sunday, I worried that Ferguson or other police shootings of African Americans would once again go unmentioned in the sermon or a prayer.

There is a black lab—a student's guide dog—lying on the floor during chapel. As I preach, I wonder what the dog is thinking.

I can see my dad's manuscript: the title centered in caps, the body double-spaced and marked up by hand. But I can't remember the words.

Shortly after my most recent move, my long-time boyfriend and I ended our relationship. The next week, I was scheduled to preach. 

I'm part of a multi-pastor church, and my colleagues graciously offered to step in and preach in my place. But I was stubborn. I decided that I wanted—no, needed—to preach.

Our guests know that resurrection defies logic. That is why they come sidling through our doors—every one of them comes hoping for it.

Our hunger is for words that evoke our deepest emotions, that name the wilderness in which we live—but not alone.

Many of us love the busyness and energy of a robust church. And yet all of us pastors must summon an uncommon discipline if we are to reflect the priority of preaching.

Cornelius Plantinga Jr. contends that to be fully prepared to share a word from God with a congregation, a preacher should attend to storytellers, biographers, poets and journalists.

As church leaders, we have our ears, hearts, and words. We pray that God will use them. But we also have limitations--time, energy, and ability. And even though we feel helpless, like we can never do enough, sometimes being the person who takes the picture, who tells the story is our most important job.

“You have to grow tougher skin, Carol,” my colleague told me when I invited him to lunch and asked for his advice on a church matter. I inhaled deeply. That was the same response I heard repeatedly for the first ten years of my pastorate. Whenever I got frustrated, well-meaning friends and colleagues would tell me that I needed to miraculously grow some sort of Teflon epidermis. 

I was at a youth retreat and a senior in high school asked me, “Who are your inspirations when it comes to public speaking?"

When my senior colleague proposed a ten-week sermon series on the saints, I was hesitant. Would anyone find this interesting?

The years I spent preaching Easter brought me closer to the heart of resurrection news. They drove me deeper into the gospel.