...I am back to them again. I have had enough of rebellion! *Surrender*
This time, I am appraising my sermon via a video recording of it. In 1500 words, I have to comment on the content (structure, appropriateness of my illustrations, explanation of biblical text, applications, etc) as well as delivery of my sermon (voice, articulation, gestures, means of communication, time-keeping, etc).
The preaching last Tuesday went OK. I wouldn't say that I am satisfied with it, haha ~ I already wasn't satisfied with it before I preached, because I felt that the sermon lacked something. It's got nothing to do with perfectionism, ok. And then my gut feelings were confirmed by the class discussion on my sermon.
There is a first for everything. It was my first time preaching on a Gospel narrative (Luke 18:35-43 = the story of Jesus healing the blind man), which had just one main message. All these while, I have only preached on passages from Paul's epistles - which have a few messages each. This time, I wasn't sure that my usual way of deductive preaching would work - I opted for an inductive style instead... whereby you try not to disclose your main point till the end of the sermon. A lot of story-telling, working the illustrations and explanations into the story-telling, etc. In theory, it was quite understandable. However, in practice, it was really hard. I am not sure if I will try again so soon. I nearly killed myself this round. I must recover from the PTSD first, haha. Say this is part of my journey to becoming a good preacher ~ God willing. No pain, no gain.
My classmates were tactful in appraising my sermon. First, they gave me the strengths (it was like giving me anaesthetics for the pain I might suffer later, haha) and then, they bombarded me with the weaknesses. Strengths? A good and soothing voice, good Scripture reading, good facial expression, good presentation skills, appropriate pace and pauses, good imagination (with regards to story-telling), good humour here and there, good articulation, etc. I deduced that basically my sermon delivery was good. Someone even said that she was in cloud-nine the moment I began preaching - whatever that meant. The weaknesses were more toward the content of the sermon - certain terms needed to be explained further and stepped up (especially that of "faith") and I needed to focus, i.e. instead of talking about how we needed to have faith in Jesus and how faith-filled believers could bring the hope of Christ to the world, I could just focus on the one of these two points. Also, my classmates commented on minor interpretative issues.
And my lecturer commented that I was holding the microphone as if I were a singer and not a preacher. :P I couldn't help laughing.
I watched the video recording of my sermon two days after I preached. And I cringed mostly at my lopsided smile, weird eyebrows (I have a weird habit of raising them too) and I thought that I looked too fat. So un-academic. I am not sure how I will critique myself in the paper.
BUT... I must really appreciate my husband and little sister for being so long-suffering and helping me to sharpen my sermon. And listening to me preach again and again - when I was down in KL for my US Visa interview. It was a bit like American Idol. I had my panel of two judges!
Hubby did tell me that he couldn't get the message I wanted to convey the most. I am glad he did - coz I changed some of my sermon in order to make it sharper.
Zoey was the only judge who got the entire message of my sermon, even though I had preached it to her while she was really sleepy. She did not fall asleep while I was preaching, thankfully. She was the only person (even among my seminary classmates) who could truly reiterate my sermon points after I was done *salute*. And she gave me loads of encouragement too. Such a lovable sister.
Well, that was how this particular preaching experience went. I thank God for leading and teaching me through it. More in the future! :)
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