200
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a good Visual metaphor
Later today, I will begin writing my 200th sermon since being called as pastor of MacGregor EMC. Given the general length of the sermons I have given over the years, change though it has, some quick mental math tells me that is in the ballpark of 675,000 words; 1700 pages. Some of that I will say has absolutely been better than others, but all of it, I am pretty sure, was written with intention and care.
Below you will find a couple of those sermons from over the years, or at least the services they found themselves a part of. It is not that any of these are particular favourites, but they are all important in their own way.
Sermon #12 - November 12, 2017 - That Time I Was Like Real Sick
I cannot say I am a fan of this particular service, but it is certainly one I remember well all these years later. It was the week of Garnet and Tracey’s goodbye service (which is included in the recording), and I was supposed to talk about the importance of prayer during my sermon. Normally that would be a relatively straightforward sermon to give, but that week, there was a slight problem. I was really sick. Like ‘throwing up and not being able to think for more than a few moments before floating off into a cloud’ kind of sick, and had been for long enough that I didn’t manage to fully write out what I wanted to say. This was before we had things like the pandemic to tell us not to go into large groups of people while ill, and besides I was pretty determined to be there for Garnet and Tracey, as well as I was relatively confident the culprit was something I ate.
Thankfully for the sermon, what’s better when talking about prayer, than actually praying? As such, after winging the first half of what I wanted to say, witness the only spontaneous small group prayer mid-sermon that has happened since I arrived! It is not by coincidence that it begins not long after you can really tell that I am no longer fully present, even though I am still preaching away!
Sermon # 96 - March 22, 2020 - That Time the World Shut Down
I was in an area pastor’s prayer meeting when the news came about the first lockdown. I believe it was pastor Myron from Westend who read the restrictions out for all of us. I remember that meeting well because while it started with a lot of uncertainty, by the end of it we actually came away somewhat encouraged because as local churches, we had a plan. All of the congregations in the area would put out a mailer/poster letting the community know that while we may have to stay at home for the time being, the church would still be there to talk, to run groceries, and for resources in case there were any shortages.
That meeting really influenced the direction my first online pre-recorded sermon would take. Things may be uncertain, but God knows what to do, so even now when we are frightened, let’s help our neighbours as we are called to. Let us be the church.
Sermon #100 - May 3, 2020 - That Time we Tried Something Real Different
After a month of the lockdown, there came a point where I began to wonder if the pre-recorded sermon format could possibly be used to our advantage when it came to preaching. I have long loved Vinyl Cafe and at that point in the pandemic, I was also particularly absorbed by a thriller/fantasy audiobook I was listening to while working on the house. As such, I figured why not try to bring that into preaching and see what happens?
Storytelling in preaching I know is not everyone’s cup of tea. There are a number in our congregation who absolutely love it, but there are also those who very much so do not. For me though, I will always think of it as a literal God send. I remember feeling going into the pandemic a certain amount of malaise around preaching. It had become something I did, but it felt like it was all by the numbers, not the life-giving thing for me that it once was. The string of storytelling sermons that came during the pandemic very much so breathed new life into preaching for me. While I do think that now that time has passed as well, I am nevertheless thankful God pointed me in that direction for a season.
Sermon #149 - July 11, 2021 - That Time We Could See The End
While it feels like we did pre-recorded sermons and then seating restrictions forever, looking back at the timeline now, it was only for about 16 months. The following is the last pre-recorded service we did before switching to what we are doing now, a one-week delay from a live recording. I include it because you can really tell listening to this, that those 16 months were enough to make those of us who recorded and edited the service into semi-pros at it. While that way of being the church was never the ideal, that didn’t mean for a second that God could not use it to spread his word all the same.
Sermon #197 - November 6, 2022 - That Other Time Sickness Hit
Only one more. This one is recent; only a few weeks back. Once again sickness had hit me like a truck, but more during the early week than the weekend. I knew it wasn’t Covid, and it had passed through my children fast enough that I was aware that while I did not feel well at all then, I would still be good enough to preach that Sunday. And so, cold medication flowing through me, I wrote a sermon.
Now, typically I like to script down to the letter when I write sermons. I do this because one time when I was preaching before I came to MacGregor, I preached from memory and in doing so a 20-minute sermon I had carefully prepared, instead became a 5 minutes sermon, which was very much so commented on by a number of people in attendance that morning. Combine this formative memory with how my children do not much care if I do not sleep Saturday nights, and I have found scripts to be a winning formula for consistency.
The week of this sermon, however, I learned an important truth. I should not write sermons while I am taking cold medication. I learned this truth at 11:30pm Saturday night, when i reviewed the sermon I thought was done just to refresh it in my mind. It read like monkeys at a typewriter. And so once again, like with the sermon mentioned above, I winged it based off of what I thought I wanted to say. I think the end result shows that I have in fact gotten better at preaching over the years, because this one, thank the Lord, didn’t turn out half bad.
After all of this, you may wonder why I didn’t include the first sermon I ever did when I arrived all the way back in the summer of 2017. Alas, I cannot find a recording of sermon number one. I fear it is lost to time. But I do still have the script for it, as I do all the sermons I have written over the years. if you want to check it out, just click on the button below.
Reading that script after all these years, I do see that in it there is one pretty excellent line; fitting to close just such an article as this. So, allow me to plagiarize myself this once:
“On a personal note, I truly want to thank you all for calling me to be your pastor. This means more to me…to us… then you know. I look forward to getting to know all of you and serving you as best I can over the time to come.” - Sermon # 1 - August 13, 2017 - That First One
Thank you. I pray the next 200 will be even better still, and that God will speak through them in new and exciting ways for us all.
