Apprentice » Sermons

Preaching

John — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:24:35 +0000

I’ve had the privilege of preaching at Dun Laoghaire Presbyterian Church’s “Saturday @ 5″ service. It’s on Saturdays… at 5 pm… and after the sermon they break for tea and coffee and then come back for a Q&A session with the preacher, which I think is a great idea and I really enjoyed it. Then on Sunday I got to preach the same sermon at Greystones Presbyterian Church (my placement). The reading for the sermon is Luke 15:1-2, 11-32 and you can hear the sermon online here: Two Lost Sons. In case you’re wondering after listening to the sermon, the website I mentioned is Wordle.net.

This week I also had the great experience of attending the Irish Preachers Conference, which was held in Dun Laoghaire. The conference was attended by preachers from all over Ireland (and a surprising amount of Australians!) and was a mix of seminar and workshops. I had a great time and was really challenged, encouraged and helped in my ministry by the conference.

Firsts

John — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:19:50 +0000

I preached my sermon on Romans 3:19-26 today. I think it went well and, as usual when I preach, I’m thankful to God that I didn’t swear or anything. It’s always a worry. My parents came along today, making this the first time they’ve ever set foot in my church. My sister and her kids came too, I had no idea they were coming until just before we left for church. It was good to have my family there. Today was also the first time I’ve ever lead the whole service. I think I got everything done.

My sermon recording is online as part of the Cahir Presbyterian Church podcast or you can just click here to listen.

Catching Up

John — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:54:58 +0000

Wow, 10 days since I last posted, there’s a lot I should have written on already. Sorry about that.

Yesterday I gave my first sermon at my home church*. Don’t ask me how it went. It all feels like a blur but I have been assured that it was not just a blur to the listeners. I said all that I wanted to say, I think. Anyway you can judge for yourself since the recording is online here.

My friend Carmel came down to see me preach and we got to hang out in Cahir for a few hours. We went to Cahir Castle but between my rubbish phone camera and Carmel’s flat batteries we couldn’t really take many pictures. Just trust me it was good. It was good to have a friend there on the day (not to say that my church brothers and sisters aren’t friends, but you know what I mean), preaching is understandably made easier when this is your audience:

The banners for the church arrived on the 18th**. They look great! Peter and I are going to try to hang one of them on Tuesday after our meeting. Please pray that nobody dies.

On Saturday the 21st** Sam let me know the Scripture he was going to preach on the next day. I was able to make a bi-lingual Scripture printout for the Romanian kids so they could more easily follow along with us. Unfortunately they never showed up that Sunday. I did the same for yesterday and they didn’t show up either. Please pray that we haven’t lost the kids, it was great having them there.

I’ve been really rubbish at my time management lately. I think the sense of dread I feel when I wake up on work days might have something to do with it. It’s hard to be efficient and productive when you’re depressed. I really am not sure what’s supposed to happen here – the job really is getting hard to bear, I haven’t been this depressed in a long time. I feel myself being pushed out to go somewhere else but I don’t see anywhere else I can go to. I need a job that I can do, that will let me still go to IBI, and is not my current job, but such jobs don’t seem to exist.

* Second sermon in total. My first sermon is online here.

** This un-natural listing of dates is one of the prices I pay for waiting so long to post. Sorry.