Tuesday, July 26, 2005

I'm preachin' in the rain, just preachin' in the rain

What a glorious feeling, I'm... oh, wait. Nope. It turns out that when you get into a pulpit, and the congregation is looking up and around and at each other instead of listening to your sermon, well, its not actually a glorious feeling.

This past Sunday, I thought I had a decent sermon - telling the whole story of Solomon, and talking about our need to nurture and cultivate spiritual gifts over our whole lives. I even began by talking about Aladdin and some of the similarities, in order to get at the distinctly non-happy-ever-after part of the Solomon story. It wasn't my best sermon ever, but I thought it was at least vaguely interesting. Only a couple sentences in however, I noticed that the congregation was clearly not paying any attention.

Now, to be fair, there was a huge thunderstorm going on overhead. The thunder made it hard to hear, and the PA system tended to crackle when there was lightning - so I was willing to cut them a little slack. But c'mon - at least listen the first paragraph before checking out!

Then, the ink on my page started to smear, and I realized what was happening. My church is a beautiful, traditional looking church - wooden pews, lots of stained glass, choir stalls in the chancel - and absolutely no air conditioning. We do have overhead fans, by pulling on these long ropes, you can open the highest row of stained glass windows - and together, it makes the church almost bearable in summer. Of course - open windows in a thunderstorm are less helpful: the poor congregation was getting rained on!! Since I had been sitting up in the chancel, I hadn't realized it. Thankfully, my ever-ready husband and another man got up and started closing the windows. But as I mentioned before, this requires pulling on long ropes - and you need to stand in the center aisle of the church. Distracting, to say the least, but it did put a stop to the spontaneous baptisms going on! Maybe next time, we'll just stop what we're doing, stand up, and reaffirm our Baptismal covenant.

5 comments:

Karen Sapio said...

I once preached just after a gigantic early snowfall. As I began to speak, all the snow avalanched off the roof with a thunderous crash right outside the clear, colonial style windows. Bit unnerving, especially as it was one of my very early efforts . . .

Emily said...

I once preached while the congregation was watching not me but the five year old who was wandering around the congregation looking for her mother. They all swore they were listening to me but I know better.

Anonymous said...

LOL! I was thinking the same thing! Sounded like a prime moment to reaffirm baptismal vows.

Beth said...

wow, i SO want to do that with a group now!

too bad my cpe group is interfaith, it's supposed to rain tomorrow...

Anonymous said...

spontaneous baptisms. love it! might it be the move of the spirit we've all be praying for and anticipating.

yeah next rainstorm stop preaching and soak in his goodness sister!

be blessed