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Beginning to Swim, er, I mean, Preach

Posted on January 9, 2013April 6, 2021 by ptsblog
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Preaching.  It was a word I had come to loathe, because there is no humanly way to avoid it, at least that I have discovered. Once you tell people you are going to seminary, there is a high probablility their immediate response is to say, “Oh, so you want to be a preacher?”

Now, I have learned to be careful about voicing what I want, because it always seems a majority of the plans I want and intend crumble to the wayside, no matter how hard I fight toward them.  At the very least they don’t actualize how I had foreseen them progressing in the realm of my over active imagination. So when this question happens upon my path, as it likes to do, my as close to neutral response has been, “Yeahhhhh, um, no, not really. I don’t think so.”

The thought of me preaching terrified (and terrifies) me, which surprised (and still surprises) some people when they take into account my undergraduate studies in theatre, but to me there is something significantly different about standing behind a pulpit as opposed to an open stage or any other similar what-have-you (and I would like to take this parenthetical moment to point out the focus of my theatrical studies was in back stage).

Because (as I’m convinced) God loves irony, people were placed in my path of an extreme persistent nature who kept putting this particular conference for preachers in my periphery.  So like a rock in the water, or, a more accurately, a child with a piece of chocolate cake within their reach, I caved in under the pressure and conceded, much to the delight of all those unnamed individuals and the dismay of my internal working who immediately decided to go into overdrive pumping nervousness and anxiety into my system.

So there I was, riding a current of trepidation staring at blank pages hoping the sermon would just write itself, wishing there was a way to back out but not wanting to be that girl.  Cause no one likes that girl.  But I trudge through the days, force out something that looks suspiciously like words on paper, only to rewrite most of it on the way to the conference on lined notebook paper (because the first draft was obviously a bit too suspicious), arrived, listened to someone else preach, took the 11 steps to the pulpit, said a prayer, opened my mouth and spoke.

Now I know thus far I have only been talking about me, because that is the only experience I can really expound from, but my story is not the point; it is the fears and nerves that kept my feet dragging.  Fears that I would mess up, do something wrong and dishonor God.  Fears that it would be terrible, that my peers would at least think so thus losing their good opinion (assuming their opinion of me is good to begin with).  But as I sat in my seat, before my name was called I took those 11 steps, my heart pounding against my rib cage in its futile attempt to escape, a thought came to me: Christ is with me, so what am I afraid of?

Failure? Well, failing has been a great teaching tool in my life, for how else can I learn to be better.  Doing it wrong?  We all have different styles, and not one is better than the other.  Having something wrong?  That is why we need to be a Body, to keep each other accountable.

And that is what I experienced on my maiden voyage of all that is pulpit related at a conference geared specificially to helping each other be better at serving our God through the power of the spoken word.  A place where for a few days the Church was unified in the goal of being better stewards of the Gospel, where love abounded across all boundries and walls.  And love drives out fear. 🙂

By Rebecca Dix, M.Div. student, on her experiences at the Academy of Preachers Conference, held Jan. 2-5, 2013.

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Founded in 1794, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is a graduate theological school of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), offering master's and doctor of ministry degrees as well as certificate programs. Participating in God's ongoing mission in the world, Pittsburgh Seminary is a community of Christ joining in the Spirit's work of forming and equipping people for ministries familiar and yet to unfold and communities present and yet to be gathered.

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