| Day / Time | Activity |
| Monday | Day Off |
| Tuesday | Read the texts for Sunday |
| Wednesday | Allow time for texts to be mulled over. Meanwhile carry on with everyday business as usual. |
| Thursday | More mulling, while burying people / visiting people / preparing assemblies / church committees etc etc etc |
| Friday | Forget there's a sermon to be written. Do some more of the above. Still plenty of time. |
| Saturday 6pm | Go on Twitter to tell everyone you'd better write a sermon pretty soon. Receive lots of affirmation. |
| Saturday 7pm | Watch old "Midsomer Murders". It was the creepy vicar. But then it always is. |
| Saturday 8pm | Back on Twitter bemoaning a lack of ideas. Receive lots of affirmation. |
| Saturday 9pm | Write a blog post on the text, thinking it might become a sermon. |
| Saturday 10pm | Read back blog post and realise that 2,000 words on how you felt once while sitting by a pond in a retreat house in Leicestershire hardly counts as a sermon. Despair |
| Saturday 11pm | Jot down three points: "Some people weren't nice to Jesus" "Jesus was nice" "Be like Jesus". Reflect that it's true, albeit a bit brief. Probably will be able to pad it out in the morning? |
| Saturday 11.15pm | Well-earned gin/scotch/beer/milk/cocoa |
| Sunday 00:00 - 6am | Stressy dreams in which Simon Cowell is in the congregation, giving his views on your sermon, its theology and illustrations. You keep forgetting what the reading is, and you are unaccountably dressed as Looby Loo. |
| Sunday 6am | Make stupidly strong coffee. |
| Sunday 6.15am | Check to see if anyone's blogged any sermons. Discover they have, but they're all completely at odds on the meaning of the readings. Despair. |
| Sunday 6.30am | Go on Twitter to tell everyone how hard it is. |
| Sunday 7am | Have another coffee. |
| Sunday 7.15am | Try "Text this Week". Discover that they think it's something before Lent and you've got it as something after Epiphany. Despair. |
| Sunday 7.20am | Just another ten minutes on Twitter? |
| Sunday 8am | Have another coffee. |
| Sunday 8.15am | Spend a while ensuring all the coffee you just drank won't be causing a "problem" halfway through the service. |
| Sunday 9am | Start to lead service fretting about the fact you've not got a sermon. Preach on three points: "Some people weren't nice to Jesus" "Jesus was nice" "Be like Jesus". |
| Sunday 10.15am | Everybody says "Nice sermon, vicar/pastor/archdruid. Nice and short." |
| Sunday 10.30am | Reflect you should probably blog your sermon, like everyone else. |
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Oh, those uneasy dreams...
ReplyDeleteLooby Loo? Good of you to own up to your age but otherwise I'm struggling.
ReplyDeleteAnyway there is always the 'Jesus wasn't nice he was good and there's a big difference'
sermon.
Well I do have the sermon I preached 6 years ago. And three years ago. And I don't think this lot of heard it. Or did I bring it out for proper Ascension Day? And anyway, does it adequately cover the European Union question?
ReplyDeleteWere you reading my mind last night?
ReplyDeleteI have an archive of about ten years of the Expository Times - a relic of when my father was the editor - with a sermon for every week of the year. This means that, unless I'm spectacularly unlucky and get planned at the same church for the same week more than ten times, I always have something to fall back on.
ReplyDeleteOf course, these being mainly from the eighties, they aren't always bang up to date, but it's surprising/depressing how often something written in a time of crisis thirty-odd years ago appears impressively relevant to the world today!