The season...

Well, put another Christmas season in the books.

T'was a little less hectic than some.  We had no snow.  Missed that.  Our kids enjoyed themselves, rocked out with recycled gifts from their cousins (great idea Niki) slept in 'till 8:00am Christmas day, were good as gold the night before at a Christmas Eve service.

Good times.

Today at THE WELL was a tough one.  Partly due to the classic 'post Christmas slump' most churches see (people are away or just so tired from the week they stay at home in their PJ's--and I totally 'get it' for whatever that's worth) and partly due to me re-preaching my sermon.

I remember swearing off 're-preaching' at one point during my last stint as a full-time preacher/church planter.  I felt like things just didn't 'gel' in the same way when you were coming to a text you'd prepped for another time and place.

With today's text ('The Simeon Sequence' from Luke 2:22-32) I had preached one of my favorite all-time sermons my last night in the pulpit at FT.  I felt like the exegetical work was solid and that re-doing it (from one of my favorite all-time NT passages) would be a waste of time.

So, I decided to re-preach.

And it wasn't great.

Felt like I was preaching uphill the whole way.  Didn't feel like I ever 'hit' the pocket.  Just felt like 'work' when usually--for me--it's work fired by inspiration in the moment as God partners with preacher.

Anyway, I've been bummed all day as a result.

The good thing is, I get to 'do better' next week.  I'll start a new series and will do my best to forget today's lackluster performance remembering all the while that a church is built over time, by God's grace, and not as an exclusive result of my preaching.

A lesson I've taken from this is that I need to remember that I've changed (and will continue changing) as a man, as a writer as a preacher and as a pilgrim.  The points that jump out to me today (as worthy of being preached) reflect those changes.  Also, my context is different today than it was five years ago. Whereas FT was a city church full of hipster twenty-something city-folk, THE WELL is a suburban church filled with suburban folk inhabitants of a fairly conservative city.

I've been finding this a bit of a strain as I strive to stay true to who God has called/gifted me to be, while doing my best to try and 'hear' His word for these particular people in this particular place.

A challenge with church planting is that the church you're preaching to this week is--most likely--not going to look like the church you'll be preaching to five years from now but the church of tomorrow is connected to the church of today in tone, culture, vibe, presence, ethic and many other ways.

How to preach and lead well today with an eye to tomorrow while being faithful to who you've been gifted to be while not allowing yourself to calcify (as in: "This is who I am and I'm not moving.") is quite the trick.

Struggling with it a bit today.

T