Practicing Religion

The seminary brings whole new meaning to the phrase, "practice what you preach." Underneath the large sanctuary, in the basement of the chapel, there is a practice chapel. There, you can go over your liturgical dance-steps, don robes without strange glances, try to hit that high note on your favorite hymn, or simply practice what you preach.

Besides being goosepimply cold all year long, it's a pretty nice room. In the winter I spent hours honing my praying gesture, memorizing the benediction, and shuffling between 20 tabbed pages in the Lutheran Liturgy Playbook (I made up that name, I have no idea what it's really called, but it's a big book with lots of those long, bookmarkish things that you see in really expensive books).

Just a few weeks ago I took it up another level. I got to practice how I preach.

There are a few basic lessons I learned about preaching, this being my first try and all. To begin with, you always kick it off with some greeting of grace and peace from God and Jesus. This is important because it cues in the congregation that it is now ok to start thumbing through the weekly announcements in the bulletin. Omit the words, and they might think you're just talking for any reason. Once they know it's a sermon, they can settle into their comfort zone.

Secondly, you stay behind the pulpit. The pulpit is important because it blocks the view of your feet, which are nervously shifting back and forth, and your hands, which are involuntarily shaking. Whether your hands are shaking because you're scared to death or because the room is bordering on 40 degrees Farenheit, it's hard to say. Also, stepping outside of the pulpit might interfere with the aforementioned comfort zone of the listeners - and that's just bad news all around.

Thirdly, I learned that it is important to have a pulpit that is not taller than the person in it. Big pulpits look fancy and imposing and all, but when they make the person in them look extra scrawny, I think it detracts from the message a little bit.

I'm sure I will learn much more in the future. If you're interested, below is the text to the first sermon I delivered in class.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfr8jjkw_1ffrxhpdm