This whizzy new design allows me to add a banner photo - but actually it's a fairly narrow strip of a photo in practice.  So I chose part of my Dibley Dandelion which is somehow a metaphor for ministry and mission... uncontrollable as the Holy Spirit, dandelions and thistles thrive in unexpected places, and send forth their seeds on the wind, not sure where they will go or if they will take root, but doing so anyway.  I kind of hope that my life's work, and indeed this blog, involves wafting some dandelion seeds into the world where some of them just may take root, grow, and seed again for a new generation...

Today's PAYG was on part of the creation story.  The thing that struck me most was when the reflection said:

You are a mircale

You are here because God wanted you to exist

I know a lot of people who, for one reason or another, are at present questioning their own worth, maybe becuase of age or infirmity, education or employment, decisions or disasters.  All of us, even those who are feeling generally content can benefit from a little bit of encouragement.  And this seems to make a nice mantra for today:

I am a miracle

I am here because God wants me to exist

May God bless us all with the wonder of believing that truth

This morning for our all age, all together bit of the service I told the story of "the man with wibbly-wobbly legs"... a telling of the the Markan narrative of the four friends who brought their disabled friend to see jesus, climbed on the roof of the house and broke through to gain acess to Jesus.  But this telling requires as a visual aid four identical strips of card joined together end-to-end with paper fasteners so that you can manipulate them into different shapes... a house, a hole, a bed being lowered and, of course, some wibbly wobbly legs.  It went down well, it never fails to... it is simple and intriguing how these bits of connected card can become images for the story.  And it intrigues me that it never fails to go down so well, because I first saw it around forty years ago in a URC in Northamptonshire.

Which got me wondering, which are the stories (or all age talks or children's addresses or whatever name we prefer) that stick in the mind and why.  Back in those teenage years, I recall one of the GB/Sunday School leaders saying she recalled a visiting preacher who, as he told his story, had put together a fishing rod; she had no recollection of the message, but she recalled how she had watched, spellbound, as the rod was assembled.  There is one I recall for all the wrong reasons, as it was someone telling about a particular (now viewed with suspicion) charismatic evangelist and the sentence, allegedly translated as "in the morning I see a man ahead of me" recalled independently by myself and my (photographic memory) sister as "um bongo titty phoowayo".  Even if it was genuine, it wasn't the best thing to say when a load of teenagers were in the congregation...

Of course, I have no way of knowing which, if any, of the stories or activities I offer will lodge in the memories of anyone  who hears them.

Here is a version of the wibbly-wobbly man told by an American woman... not quite how I tell (I don't ever add on the object lesson/now let's work in the cross bit) it but worth a look see...

This morning I've just about knocked my sermon into an acceptable shape... the third attempt is, I have decided, OK.  Not my best sermon ever.  Not my worst sermon ever.  A bread-and-butter kind of a sermon, and that's OK.

It used to be easy to produce good sermons way back when I began to preach - there were long lead times and plenty of opportunity to mull over ideas and pray for inspiration.  It wasn't too bad when I was a student, usually only preaching once a fortnight (almost always in the same place) which still left lots of time to ponder, write, re-write and re-invent.  Then it was the two sermons a week phase, which began to erode some of the creativity as deadlines could not be avoided - Sunday arrived every week, bang on time, and something had to be delivered, twice.  It was a relief to revert to one a week (when the two services were combined) and to have time to craft, revise and hone my sermons - some were pretty good (or they seem it when I look back). 

Fifteen years since I began to preach frequently as well as regularly, and in the last few weeks I've once again become aware how easy it is to slip into some kind of diligent and worthy but not very inspired sermon-writing.  Read the passage, study the commentaries... and write a competent exegesis...add a bit of application... but that's not a sermon.

In the end, what I have this week is a broadly expository type sermon, which is pretty much my default mode - suits my scientific mind, takes account of the exegesis and hopefully offers something worth pondering to the hearer.

This is not a grumble, nor is it a sense of 'burn out', just a recognition of how easy it is to end up in some sort of a rut, unthinkingly churning out stuff that people are sufficiently generous to listen to but that lacks a certain "je ne sait quoi".  I am enjoying myself working systematically through the start of Mark's gospel, and have learned loads in the process - but that isn't ever going to be enough, sermons are not lessons.

Thankfully, preaching and the creation of acts of worship remains a geniune mystery (mysterion) and the links and hints emerge unbidden as the musicians and intercessors play their part, as the people of God become the Body of Christ, as, depsite our clay-footed, ham-fisted endeavours it works.  And I guess, ultimately, that's more important than whether I consider my sermons to be good, bad or indifferent!