The spirit in which we preach

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Like many pastors, I remember clearly the first sermon I ever preached. It was during my second semester of seminary, and I probably worked on it for 50 hours. Each detail was written and rewritten until I was confident I had produced the greatest theological document by a seminarian in quite some time. I trusted that God had given me a message to preach, and I was excited to get in the pulpit and begin.

But driving to the service that morning, I started thinking about how when we were children, my brothers and I always looked forward to the Sundays when the seminary intern was preaching. Those were the weeks we had the best chance of convincing my parents to skip worship so that we could remain at home and have fun.