wink     ; )

Preaching

I finished my preaching class last week (well, the classroom portion of it at any rate; I still have post-class assignments to do) and it went rather well. The week was spent half in standard classroom lecture format, and the other half in workshop format. During the week, we essentially learned how to prep and structure a sermon during the lectures and then we actually preped and structured a realy sermon during the workshop portions. Then, on Friday, we proceeded to preach the sermons we had been preparing.

I had never preached before and I was nervous beforehand. I had wanted to go first to get it over with, but I'm glad I didn't get my wish. I learned a lot from the people who went before me because our prof would immediately give us feedback as soon as we finished. (We were mostly being graded on the structure and content of our sermons, not the presentation and delivery, since that was the focus of this class.)

My sermon went very well. I didn't forget anything, and I didn't have any long uncomfortable silences. I knew that my structure was solid. I ended up getting no negative feedback from the prof. (That's not to say that I'm any good at preaching, for I'm not. It just means that I've got the basics of structuring a sermon--which was the scope of the class. I still can't deliver one well to save my life.)