Preaching Nerves

Just a quickie, pigeons.

I had two consecutive weeks off in February for vacation time, and when I returned home the church had a snow day, so the person who had prepared to lead the service on February 15 wound up doing that service for February 22. The end result is that I had three weeks away from leading worship, and boy, how illuminating it was to note the increased anxiety in my brain and body the following week!

By Saturday night I was breathing shallowly, obsessing about the flow of the liturgy, reviewing the children’s message in my mind every chance I got, composing an extemporaneous prayer while cooking dinner, and heartily fretting about the sermon. I slept very poorly due to nerves on Saturday night.

None of this low-level distress is evident to me during the regular course of my working year, but having had a considerable break from it I was able to see just how much heavy lifting we are doing every Sunday. In the Unitarian Universalist tradition it is especially heavy since we use fresh words for everything from the Call To Worship to the Benediction. Phew, that’s a lot of faithful creative output!

Nothing else to add, just to say that it seemed like an important observation to share with you. MWAH!

7 Replies to “Preaching Nerves”

  1. Thanks for sharing this. I feel it, too. Last Sunday I felt the reverse – immense relief that we were snowed out and I was having a break in what was going to be five preaching Sundays in a row. Two more pressures I’d add from the Unitarian Universalist tradition – 1) no lectionary to provide structure and 2) we weight the sermon very heavily relative to other service elements. Many colleagues work hard to change the second factor, but it’s a climb.

  2. Hold on! Are you saying that in the UU tradition, you essentially have to come up with a new liturgy every week?! Forgive my lack of knowledge please. [Not at all! Thanks for asking! Congregations have an Order of Service that looks very similar across our congregations, but yes — although the elements of the liturgy tend not to change drastically from week to week, we have no prayerbook to dictate which words to use. We do not rely on Scripture for readings, so those must be found fresh for each theme, too. – PB]

  3. The order of service elements are the same. But there is no set weekly scripture to frame the sermon, choose hymns, choral and instrumental music, etc.

  4. Pretty much. The structure of a UU service might stay the same week to week (or it might not), and depending on the congregation there might be some elements of that structure that stay the same from week to week (using the same offertory hymn, or speaking the congregation’s covenant, or something) but it’s very UU to have to create the whole thing from scratch, every week, either writing new language or finding something lovely that someone else has already written.

    This is one of the things I wish they’d teach me more of in seminary. (Yes, they’re teaching me this. But seriously? EVERY WEEK? I signed up for WHAT?)

  5. Wow! That is an amazing and daunting task to accomplish weekly. My hat (kippah) is off to you all for the creative energy that must require. [Thank you, lovely. – PB]

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