It has come as kind of a shock to me, now that I am a pastor and
preaching on a regular basis, that the vast majority of the sermons I
preach will be rather ordinary. I will study hard and pray hard and work
hard, I’ll get started early in the week and give it a couple of days
to germinate and give it another look-through early on Sunday morning,
and at the end of it all I will have a rather ordinary sermon. Not a bad
one, but an ordinary one. It certainly won’t be the sermon I had
envisioned when I first sat down with my Bible and a cup of hot coffee
on Monday morning. In my mind I’ve got these visions of greatness;
before me on the pulpit I’ve got this reality of ordinariness.
Last
week a friend asked me how my sermon had gone and I said, “Somewhere
between being receiving a standing ovation and being pelted with dead
cats.” That seems to about capture it, because honestly, I don’t know.
It’s not like the people were weeping and throwing themselves to the
ground in sorrow and repentance, and it’s not like they all just got up
and left. Their response was as ordinary as my sermon—some people
expressed gratitude, a couple of people offered correctives or
improvements, and the majority said nothing while showing
nothing out-of-the-ordinary. Continue at Tim Challies
Other Blog posts by Tim Challies:
Other Blog posts by Tim Challies:
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