ArticleBlog | Blood sweat and tears – when preaching hurts
Blood sweat and tears – when preaching hurts
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 18.03.17
‘Do you enjoy preaching?’ Almost every time I preach, at least away from home, someone asks me if I enjoy preaching. The question generally comes just after the service and I always deflect it. I’m too raw just then to talk seriously about the call, and in any case it is usually a polite enquiry; others have more urgent issues to discuss. So I say yes, I do enjoy preaching.
And that is true, if slightly misleading. Of all the stages in the homiletic process, the actual preaching of the sermon is the one I enjoy most often. Sometimes I can see God’s Word doing its work in people’s lives as I look at their faces. Often there is that wonderful, powerful, dangerous, sense of being completely present in the moment, at once totally in control of all that is happening and totally controlled by the inevitability of the preaching event. Yes, I enjoy preaching. But preparing to preach hurts. And having preached hurts. And that’s where the ‘enjoy’ question becomes more complicated.
