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religion

Good preaching

[Today’s run: 3.5 miles]

We had a guest preacher today at church.  I’m not exactly sure why, because our regular preacher was there too.  But they do this kind of thing once in a while.

The guest guy was not at the top of his game, I thought.  His outline was fuzzy and his thoughts were disjointed.  He read the scripture reading  (his selection) and then spent the rest of the time trying to convince us how cool it was.  Which, it was.  But there wasn’t much explaining.

A sermon comes across differently to different people, I realize that.  So maybe other folks in attendance really liked it.  I’m willing to believe that.

I enjoy good preaching.  I grew up listening to good preachers, mostly the “teaching” kind that would go through a series of sermons on a particular scripture passage or book.

I’ve heard some good preaching that wasn’t in the teaching format too.  I remember in particular a missionary presentation while we were living in Illinois that was basically just a long reminiscence about the guy’s time in Brazil and it was very touching and effective.

But I still like the teaching kind.

Our current preacher is a teaching kind and I enjoy what he has been doing.  He just started a series on Ecclesiastes and it looks like it is going to be hard going.  But he’s doing a good job on it and I have enjoyed both of the sermons so far.  He is organized and he has particular points he wants to communicate and he builds the sermon to accomplish that.

I think good preaching takes a lot of work and preparation.  I’m probably too lazy for it.  The ones who put in the effort, you can tell.  Or at least I think so.  I don’t have any statistics to rely on, that’s my hunch.