the new guy

Well... this is it... this Sunday is my first week as the new preacher at Rochester Church of Christ.

I am excited. I am terrified. I am anxious. I am thrilled. I am thankful. I am learning. I am blessed.


I am blessed to be part of such a patient, forgiving, daring, bold, and faithful community.

I am blessed with a God so great that my words and actions can never exaggerate or exhaust his goodness, love, and grace.

I am blessed to be in the company of those who have been given an opportunity to call upon the name of God before the open hearts and minds of his people. I am blessed to be a preacher.

But still, I am scared.

Interestingly, it is not the art of preaching that scares me. I love preaching. I am certainly not the best at it, but I enjoy it. I like the feel and shape of the words, the rhythm and meter of delivery, the parry and thrust of rhetoric. It is intoxicating to feel the presence of the Spirit and the Word as the Father takes my human words and breathes life into them.

No... it is the act of preaching that scares me. It is the fact that I am so inadequate and unqualified to stand before a group of believers and proclaim "this is the word of the Lord to his people." As Haddon Robinson began nearly every sermon in his life:

"God, if these people knew about me what you know about me, they wouldn't listen to a word I said."

But, I remind myself of this: GRACE.

This is not a thinly veiled plea for reassurance. This is not a begging for forgiveness before I even open my mouth. This is simply a reminder to myself that I am what God has made me, not because I ever qualify myself for such things, but because God is gracious and loving to me. God believes in me much more than I believe in me. And any preacher who sees his role otherwise shouldn't be preaching.

And just as he whispered to Paul so long ago, God now whispers to me:
 

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”