I listen carefully to comments made to me after a sermon. After preaching I wonder what people heard while I was preaching, what resolutions they made in their own mind, what questions were raised, etc... I received several interesting comments today. One person expressed disappointment that I did not use the King James version when we said the Lord's Prayer in unison at the conclusion of the sermon (I used the New King James version). They were not so much averse to the version used as longing for the nostalgic familiarity of the King James. Another person mentioned a prayer clip from the movie Patton that they thought might have fit well with that sermon (I'll check into it for future sermons in this series). Yet another asked when I'm going to show the meal time prayer from Sister Act. The answer: probably in a few weeks; I'd like to space out the meal time prayer as much as possible since that is the most frequent prayers to be found in the movies. However there was one comment that especially caught my attention. One person expressed appreciation for the sermon since it answered the question he has been asking for the past few weeks: Is it really o.k. to pray the words of others? This person has been involved in our Wednesday evening prayer sessions, praying daily through the Face to Face book, and spent an hour praying for our teenagers during our recent prayer chain. Thank you Lord, for working through me to answer a real heart question from one of your intercessors! This is what makes preaching worthwhile.
Here's the clips shown from this week's sermon:
Christmas Vacation
Aunt Bethany's Prayer
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Fiddler on the Roof
Sabbath Prayer
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1 comment:
I always grew up hearing the same prayers over and over. Once I learned the churchy term "vain repetition", I quickly labeled them as such. But as I began to mature in the faith I saw it as something different. Perhaps they were the same words, but they often carried deep (and differing) meanings. I think public prayer is an interesting situation and an awkward one as well, at least they way we do it. Our worship centers are all set up to have audiences and performers. The audience sets in the pews and the performers up on the stage, not wonder there is so much pressure and so few men will actually say public prayers or lead a devotional thought or lead worship, we have cultivated a performance society. Perhaps knowing and being reminded of what you shared with us on Sunday will help those of us who may feel a bit uncomfortable trying to form our own words and not feel so bad about praying a pre-written (whether by ten hours 2000 years) prayer.
Just a thought - people get up in arms that prayers seemed rehearsed and not from the heart, but they don't mind the preacher working form a script? What's up with that?!?!? : )
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