So I preached yesterday – and I think it went pretty well for not having preached in a long time. I went back and forth between a more formal manuscript style of preaching, and a very informal conversational style. I want to be able to do the conversational style of preaching well – so I’m still working on that. Preaching class at Princeton certainly did not help me in that regard.
It was a small gathering yesterday – I think I counted 13 people, including Sarah and I. The best part were the comments I received after the sermon. I spoke a lot about technology, Wikipedia and open source things in the sermon. So, instead of having theological conversations after the sermon, I served as temporary tech-support. One very kind older gentleman approached and said, “That was a great sermon. But I just have two questions. First, how do I get to Wikipedia? And second, I just got a new email address for my wife, but I can’t figure out how to log on to AOL to retrieve her email. What do I do?” We had some good conversations at the coffee hour, but I did enjoy the fact that it was the “tech” stuff that stuck in the people’s minds the most.
If you would like to just read the sermon, you can find it here. Or if you’re interested in participating in a collaborative preaching experiment, go here for the instructions.