Ok, here is the truth, I havn't written a sermon in years. I've studied, researched, rehearsed, and preached once or twice a month for the last 7 years, but I rarely write any thing down. This assures that I won't "pull one out of the files" at the last minute.
It also makes it very hard to actually write a manuscript for a class I'm taking today called Process Preaching. This class is supposed to be about taking a manuscript and preaching an extemporaneous sermon. The hardest thing for me is going to be writing the manuscript!!!
So I'm working on my Confirmation sermon, several weeks in advance.
Confirmation reminds me of change, since we are welcoming these 17 young people as Adult Members of this congregation. They are affirming thier baptism. A gift given them, which they are claiming as their own. We celebrate this at Zion on Reformation Sunday, when we remeber how the church has changed in the last few hundred years.
So watch them grow. My kids are 2,4 and 8 now. The confirmands are in 9th grade, and the kids I confirmed my first year at Prince of Peace are in College now.
Change is good, chage is inevitable, change can be really really hard. Changing to the habit of writing things down for sermons is proving to be the third: really really hard!!
