... a bit more than 'just' preaching without notes

This week I ended up with two 'sermonettes' each lasting around ten minutes which emerged from the same passages and which were alternatives for the service.  One began by exploring the idea that God gives people athletic and other not obviously 'useful' gifts and how that might work out,;the other used the 'forming, storming, norming, performing' model for team 'evolution'.  I'm sure either would have been fine, and I knew which one I favoured using, then this morning I woke up feeling that neither really did what I felt I wanted/needed/was led/any-or-all-of-the-above to do.  So, on my walk to church (roughly a mile and a quarter) I played around with a few ideas and then decided to take a punt and speak/preach extempore.

This was no small undertaking - nearly four years since I started chemo, I still have moments when my mind becomes a void, the ideas fall out and I can't find them no matter how hard I try.  Also, we I have heard many dire extempore preaches - I know how easy it is to degenerate into waffle, or a rant, or really just pious platitudes that end up with an altar call and/or a banal reminder that Jesus loves you.  And it's risky because I didn't quite know how it would end.

So I went for it.

I placed a chair in the middle of the open space, explained that first century rabbis preached sitting down, that Jesus was a rabbi so he probably preached sitting down, so I would too.  I played around with wondering what actually lay behind the minimalist accounts of the calls of some of the disicples and the naming of the twelve.  Then I speculated what the first meeting of the twelve might have been like - testoterone driven with posturing and preening, with squabbles and disagreements - and Jesus reminding them to become like children.  The core team - the twelve drawn from dozens, the mis-matshed, frail and failing blokes, hand-picked by Jesus... each one had something to contribute.  Then I stood up, asked what might happen if Jesus came into our church today, walked round and more or less at random named a few people 'I want you to be in my team [name] because...' of your gifts, your life experience, your youth, your potential...

It was about ten minutes, a short sermon, but long enough to do extempore.  I hope it worked.