Last Sunday I preached on "Suffering as a Christian" - available to hear online for 6 months. I was pretty happy with the content, but as ever I worry about the delivery. Feedback on the night was positive, though I do land up wondering if there's more to the comment than meets the eye. (Does
You clearly put a lot of preparation in
also mean it was too dense or long or ...?) I'd practised it in private at home, and it's amazing how odd it sounded. Despite writing it to be read out, many sentences were too long, and some phrases just didn't work. So I scribbled a lot of changes to my script. It also felt poor, because I was having to refer to the script too much. But on the night, after praying (obviously!), I was able to rely on the script much less, and it flowed much better. And I think I only noticed a few phrases that were still really awkward.Talking with Mike later, he clearly goes through exactly the same re-write stage after the first rehearsal - though he says it takes him 25% of the total preparation time on this last step. I didn't leave enough time for this, so that's something to allow for next time. Vicar Marc has very kindly offered to sit down with me and listen to my sermon and one of his, and work out what can be improved. This will no doubt be a difficult learning process, but if it improves our preaching, it will be worth it. I'll hopefully report back what we find.