Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Fear of Success

I'm a little worried.  Many people from Catawba have commented about the sermon on Sunday...all good.  Maybe a little too good.  I had feared failure, maybe I should've feared success.  Now I'm feeling the pressure of trying to measure up to the last sermon.

I'm glad for the success, however, I wonder if I set the bar too high.  I don't want this to come across as bragging or anything, I'm just basing it off what people have said.   

I will just have to trust that God uses each sermon in its own unique way.  I'm sure I will have some messages that just completely bomb and others that really connect with people.  I just pray that through it all I will have the wisdom to strive for faithfulness to God and His kingdom, whether or not the results lead to sucess.

2 comments:

revjimparsons said...

The best advice I got on preaching sermons weekly was to think about it as a baseball player's batting average...which is calculated hits divided by at bats. This means if you preach 50 sermons a year (give or take vacation and special services) to hit Ty Cobs .367 batting average means you have to have only 18 really good sermons. The rest can be just okay. This changed my perspective a little and instead of week in and week out swinging for the fences, I started to concentrate on just getting a hit.

Glad to hear you are getting a good start at the new appointment.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your comment. I am putting a lot of pressure on myself to "perform." I'm well aware of it, I'm just not sure what to do about it.

I'm trying not to have a "I have to top last week's sermon" attitude, but at the same time, I want to make sure I'm giving sermon prep its due time.

Anyway, we are still getting settled in and the July 4th week was not the norm, so hopefully, starting next week, I can get into more of a rythm of what the work weeks will look like.