Well, my latest sermon, based on “Velvet Elvis” by Rob Bell, seems to have gone down well. This despite the Vicar doing his usual act of interfering and asking me to do things differently form what I had planned. Fortunately I am used to him doing this now, and almost expect it. And to be fair, it is usually an improvement. But it does rile me that he does not implement his recommendations in his own sermons.
My son was on the PA system that night, and resisted all urges to turn me off.
My sermon was primarily about spiritual maturity, not getting dogmatic about things but being able to stretch ones faith and work with people who disagree rather than building exclusive doctrinal walls. Since it was a communion service, I was going to ask people as a practical exercise to approach the table with either a more or a less sacramental idea than they normally would. Mr Vicar extended this, by making me ask people to get up form their chairs and form groups – i.e. transubstantiation in that corner, consubstantiation over there, symbolic remembrance over here, etc. The idea was that people would then discuss these ideas, and possibly move to another group. Of course the groups comprised like-minded people, so it wasn’t 100% successful. But it made people think, and that was the main thing.
The disturbing thing is that our Vicar didn’t really seem to be aware of the range of opinion, and found this line of teaching to be quite informative. Since the Eucharist is central to Christian worship, I would like to think that an ordained minister in the Church of England has been fully trained in the theology around it.
"to be fair, it is usually an improvement. But it does rile me that he does not implement his recommendations in his own sermons..."
ReplyDeleteI've just come back from a course on how to train curates, including giving them training in preaching. I'll bear that in mind, not least because I think my sermons need a lot of remedial work!