As a guest preacher there are certain times of the year that I can be pretty certain to get an invitation from pastors to fill in for them. These are the weeks just following the major festival periods of the Christian year - Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter. And then there are always a handful of invitations during the summer months as well.

So it happened this year that a friend invited me to preach for her while she was vacationing following Christmas. I agreed knowing that I would re-gift a Christmas sermon that I had preached elsewhere several years back.

Some weeks after agreeing to that preaching opportunity, I learned that I would be the only pastoral person from the staff of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco for this same Sunday. So I got talked into taking on the sermon for that service as well. This was possible since MBCC meets in the evening and the church where I was guest preaching meets in the morning.

As it turned out, I was required to write a new sermon for the service with MBCC because we were starting a sermon series on the book of Galatians and I was asked to do the kick-off sermon giving the overview - not something I've had the opportunity to do before.

So I did it. In the middle of reading lots and lots for my upcoming D.Min. program, I paused and worked on writing a sermon on Galatians. I actually ended up enjoying writing it. But I was rather anxious about the whole day going into it. Luckily the people of both congregations showed me a lot of grace and God was definitely worshipped in both communities.

But I'm hoping not to do that again any time soon.

 

As a guest preacher there are certain times of the year that I can be pretty certain to get an invitation from pastors to fill in for them. These are the weeks just following the major festival periods of the Christian year - Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter. And then there are always a handful of invitations during the summer months as well.

So it happened this year that a friend invited me to preach for her while she was vacationing following Christmas. I agreed knowing that I would re-gift a Christmas sermon that I had preached elsewhere several years back.

Some weeks after agreeing to that preaching opportunity, I learned that I would be the only pastoral person from the staff of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco for this same Sunday. So I got talked into taking on the sermon for that service as well. This was possible since MBCC meets in the evening and the church where I was guest preaching meets in the morning.

As it turned out, I was required to write a new sermon for the service with MBCC because we were starting a sermon series on the book of Galatians and I was asked to do the kick-off sermon giving the overview - not something I've had the opportunity to do before.

So I did it. In the middle of reading lots and lots for my upcoming D.Min. program, I paused and worked on writing a sermon on Galatians. I actually ended up enjoying writing it. But I was rather anxious about the whole day going into it. Luckily the people of both congregations showed me a lot of grace and God was definitely worshipped in both communities.

But I'm hoping not to do that again any time soon.