Thursday 28 January 2010

Holding my light under a bushel

I spent last night working with one of my ministers as we are jointly leading worship on 7th February. I had looked over the lectionary readings and the outline from the resources my home church uses (Seasons of the Spirit) briefly and had laughed at 2 of the readings. Namely Isaiah 6:1-8 and Luke 5: 1-11, as they are both about calls. God calling Isaiah to be a prophet and Jesus calling the first disciples. Just my luck the first service I've planned with one of my ministers and after my local review is about call. My minister did tell me she'd laughed too. Thanks.

Looking over the meeting, I could have prepared a little more before hand, but as is was the first time I'd worked this closely with my minister preparing a service I didn't want to go the other way and have it all prepared before I even got there. Also, I can be a little backward in coming forward, especially around people I know have more knowledge and experience than I do. I know I don't have to be like this especially with my ministers and I know I'll need to get better at it.

My home church is part of a linkage and one of the churches is having communion on that Sunday, so 2 slightly different order of services were agreed on to accommodate this. I did learn my ministers try not to have the same hymn more than once ever 6 months so they don't keep picking their favourites. They aren't really strict about this as occasionally they will have members of the congregation requesting hymns which are special to them for anniversaries and such-like. I like this idea as there are plenty of hymns to choose from and different hymns speak to different people in different ways. If I start regularly leading worship at a church I will create a spread sheet to track this.

Once we had the order of service worked out we needed to divi-up who was doing what. The only obvious bit from the 2 services we my minister would lead communion. I wasn't sure I could think of how what road to go down with the sermon, so initially said I'd do the children's address and prayers. While my minister put her son to bed I had a look at the notes on the readings in the Seasons of the Spirit resources for that week, which focused on the Luke passage. When my minister came down I commented:

"You know, I wonder what the fishermen really said to Jesus, or thought under their breath? "Here's that jinner coming to give us advice. Here we are, experienced fishermen, here all night and not caught a thing. Joe's son comes along, not a clue about fishing and tells us where to stick our nets."
There again, here's God helping people, knowing exactly what they need - just look at how Peter reacted".

At that point I was volunteered to preach the sermon. Thanks.

So, looks as though, yet again, others can see my potential better than I. It's not I doubt my abilities, far from it. I was brought up not to boast, so I will hold my light under a bushel. I'm better than I used to be, but there is definitely room for improvement.

But, in the meantime, I've a children's address to prepare for Sunday.

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