Strangers & Aliens

Sunday is a pretty important day because it is the day I preach. There are all kinds of other pastoral work that are valuable, precious and critical - but preaching is the pinnacle of them all. How to prepare? I mean - how to get ready on a Sunday morning.

Mainly, I pray. I go over my material once making some last minute notes (not, in general, amendments - wholesale sermon changes rarely work for me!). I pray some more (I also pray after the message, a discipline taught me by a good friend and much neglected). Then I do something curious - I also spend a few minutes reading and meditating on the nature of what preaching actually is. I might do this with a prayer from Valley of Vision, or a Scripture, or a book excerpt. I find this enormously helpful.

Today, I read a short section from a paper that Colin Adams quoted and which I downloaded. It's got some good stuff in it, including a reminder of the vocabulary of preaching in the New Testament:

kyrss to proclaim
euangelliz to evangelise
martrye to bear witness to
didask to teach
hodge to lead or guide
ekthimi to lay out
paratithmi to entrust
diermneu to interpret
diagnoig to open

And others too! Lord, may your Spirit fill me today so that I may "proclaim, evangelise, bear witness to, teach, guide, lay out, entrust, interpret and open" your character, goodness and person.

NB - these are the Greek transliterations the document uses, though not exact. Don't send me comments about my Greek please!!