Monday, August 21, 2006

First Internship Sermon

Well, we have both survived our first Sunday of preaching on internship. It was really interesting. The arrangement for us, since both of us serve the same congregation (as well as LDR), is that on the 3rd Sunday of each month, we both preach. One of us here; the other at one of the other Lutheran churches in the conference. In some ways, both of us preparing sermons at the same time is interesting; in other ways it is a royal pain.

It might be easy, even fun, if we were preaching on the same text, but we aren't. Our internship congregation does not use the revised common lectionary, but the rest of the congregations in the conference do. No matter what, we will most likely never preach on the same text (expect maybe advent and lent - I haven't checked those, yet).

We did spend time talking with each other about the text we had, and about what ideas for preaching struck us, but then it was down to writing two sermons that are completely different. In some ways, that might be better, since we each preaching to different congregations anyway. There is certainly no room to "share" sermons here, not that we do that anyway. Our styles are too different. I want a good set of notes; Ruth Ann wants a full script. Still, being able to share some research might be nice...

At any rate, we both preached today, and from reviews so far, we did OK. I believe our Homiletics professor would have heard the good news, and we both preached from the text for the day. We did read each others sermons this afternoon (after the preaching was over) and do some of our own review. We gave each other passing grades! Wednesday will be our review with our supervisor - so we'll have to wait to see how that goes.

One thing I re-discovered about circuit riding preachers this morning - allow plenty of time to get lost at least once. I drove about 25 miles and took one wrong turn about half way there. Fortunately, God was watching out for me and my wrong turn brought me right back to where I needed to be. Even with maps and good directions, there are still ambiguous road signs to deal with.

Next Sunday will be pretty easy - I just have to learn to chant a part of the liturgy that I have never done before. Oh - and begin our first week with LDR and start learning our roles there. One thing about internship - it will not be boring - not at all!!!

1 comment:

David said...

As several of us are finding out, there is more to this internship thing than meets the eye. As I read your blog and compare your experiences to mine, I am thankful that we will have next year to de-brief. There is already so much to share and so little time. Blessings to both of you and the rest of our class as we continue to find our pastoral identity.