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Sunday, August 31, 2008

Traveling Preacher

Ah, it was one of those Sundays:
At about 5pm Saturday, I realized that I left my sermon, order of worship and directions to my friends church in Waxhaw (40 minutes South of Charlotte) where I was pulpit supplying for him. Thankfully, I could access everything from home, and by 10pm have everything printed and ready to go.

Then I woke up at 7am realizing that I had left my robe at the office. So, I took off at 7:15am, drove 20minutes North, grabbed my robe and drove home).

From 8-9:30 had a nice breakfast as a family and then we loaded up to head to Waxhaw.

We have been working on Ellie not to have a pacifer except at nap/bedtime. The biggest area of struggle is the car-ride, so we implemented the tried and true "Ol' McDonald." But by the third round of "duck," since that is Ellie's favorite animal, the car ride started to feel much longer...but I digress.

At 10:17am, we turn down the road to the church where those little Presbyterian street sign said, join us for worship at 10am...
um...my friend said worship was at 11am--I quickly pulled out the email to prove it. But as I drove up to the church I noticed the parking lot was full and a head was popping in and out of the sanctuary door looking for any car coming down the church.
Turns out this was the last Sunday of their summer schedule and somehow we got our wires crossed...so I quickly robed up since the Children's Sermon was going on...walked in and right up to the pulpit to read the epistle and gospel passage.

This experience made me totally disagree with the worship model being practiced at some large churches where the minister will run from traditional to contemporary worship in order to preach live at both services. It totally destroys the theology of preaching, since preachers are also in need of the call to worship and prayer of confession. Otherwise pulpit hopping reduces preaching to a performance.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think multiple "styles" of worship happening at the same time cheapens worship. So I'm totally with you. You need to be there, worshiping with the people, not dropping in to do a little ditty here - like some kind of baseball middle-reliever/left-handed specialist.

I feel for you in that situation and it's why God invented cell phones.

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