Thursday, May 06, 2004
filling a hole with the gifts of God
I am trying a new approach to preaching over the next few months.
The situation is that the church’s youth pastor has resigned, leaving a preaching hole in the evening service. The evening service fills a unique place in our church life – the music has a loud, hard edge and it is mostly a younger set.
I have limited time but I didn’t want a string of guest preachers. So I am going to pick up the preaching (meaning I speak 2x a Sunday). And I am trying 2 innovations.
a) a researcher :: the church is paying someone to research my sermons. The researcher (my wife) is paid to read and summarize some background reading for me each week, to surf for images and material and will input some creative ideas into the pot. The dream is to shift this creative input to a “creative team”, but in these early days, modelling is one way to suggest change.
b) digestion :: will become the name of the preaching slot, and digestion will be the aim of the service. (There is a video loop of humans digesting food to introduce the first night). I will preach the same text in the morning and evening. In the evening I will summarise the text (for people who just come in the evenings) and then introduce some participatory interaction. The aim is to not just talk about the text, but to allow us as whole people to engage with the text. Possibilities this week include praying with pastels, and next week building the mosaic of God.
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would be interested to see how this works out – hope you will put some up dates on your blog. I tried the researcher thing with some of my youth leaders once. It didn’t work out – I suspect becuase we thought very differently and so what I considered important didn’t click with the other person. the one flesh thing may help with that in your situation. As for the digestion idea – sounds like it could work, but could create more work. just a sugestion but why not do the summary thing and ask people from the morning service, for feed back in the evening service. Giving the sermon time to digest may bring some good insights. Of course you need to choose wisely but there are some quality people at Opawa.
peace out – michael
Comment by michael — May 7, 2004 @ 10:41 am
http://www.opawa.org.nz/archives/000017.html
In John 20; post-Easter, Jesus, in the name of the Father, and for the sake of mission, breathes on the disciples to “Recieve the Spirit.” This links with Genesis 2:7, God breathes life into the human. Life, creativity, vitality, passion…
Comment by Opawa Baptist Church :: a resting place — April 5, 2005 @ 10:17 pm