Gottesblog

Just a few notes as the SID convention enters its last day. 1. Once again, a resolution asking the Synod to get a plan together to end "lay ministry" will be headed to HQ. This was overwhelmingly passed in 2010 as well.

A couple of good things from the seminaries lately. First, since CTQ started getting caught up about a year and a half ago, the issues have been amazing. The last two are especially wonderful.

As in many other parishes, we hold an additional prayer office each week in Lent. Compline has settled into being the office we use most years, though Vespers and Evening Prayer have had their turns. But what of the readings?

The  incomparable Dr. William Tighe, an Anglophile Eastern Rite (Ukranian) Catholic professor of history (specializing in the English and Scandinavian Reformations) teaching at a college named for the pioneer of American Lutheranism, for some reason likes to read this blog. More than that, he likes to send the editors books. Good books. Really good books. Books you should read this Lent as part of your spiritual exercise. Here are the sparest of reviews for two of them.

Preaching is hard. This is the double plus profound conclusion I have come to. It is embarrassing to read back over many of my old sermons. Some I still like. Many I think were just...bad. I'm sure you've had similar experience. The preachers I respect the most are those who struggle with it the most and don't rest on their laurels.

So by now you have probably discovered that they didn't tell you everything in the seminary. Indeed, that it's a long list. But what I had in mind today was about the nuts and bolts of being a parish pastor. It seems odd that this would be one of the lacunae of seminary education - I think the plan is that this is what you are supposed to pick up from your fieldwork supervisor and vicarage bishop. And fair enough: we all learn a lot there.