I did my sermon this morning! As I preached my sermon and looked at
my audience, I couldn't exactly tell if they liked or disliked my
message. But I got some good feedback after the service, and my pastor
asked me if I'd be willing to preach another sermon in the future, which
I took to be a good sign.
What sort of feedback did I get after
the service? People told me that I did a good job, and one person said,
"Who would have thought that you were so LEARNED!" But what especially
intrigued me was that people were telling me about their experiences
with the Book of Job. One man said that my sermon answered a lot of
questions that he had. A lady told me that she never quite knew how to
understand the Book of Job, since Job often is praised for his patience
and perseverance, and yet Job appears to be quite impatient in his
speeches. Another lady remarked that she often tried to read Job in the
past, but she did not understand the speeches. And another lady told
me that she read the entire Book of Job before the service this morning
so she'd have background about what I would preach about, and I thought
that was really cool!
On the whole, the
service was excellent. The music was enjoyable. Someone from a local
veterans' outreach center spoke to us, and that sensitized me to the
importance helping veterans to recover from their traumas. For the
children's service, a lady told us the story about her struggles to
fulfill her dream to become a nurse, for there was reluctance to accept
her into a nursing program on account of her diabetes. But she
persevered, and she became a nurse. She told us that it's important to
persevere, because a lot of things in life are not handed to us on a
silver platter (which is true).
I was worried that my sermon would go over the time-limit for the service, but it did not, and that's good.
I'm thinking of writing a couple more posts about preaching, even though my sermon is over and done with. We'll see what I do!