I hate it when people don't finish their

Water on Mars

That line up there is particularly fitting since it's been pointed out by many how often I fail to finish my sentences, especially when preaching and teaching. My brain gets ahead of my mouth and it's the only way to get back in sync. Plus, I figure you know how the sentence ends so there's no need to say those words; time's a'wasting, let's roll.

Back to preaching in a moment, but first...
After lunch I put up the far end of the goat pen fence. I've now done it enough that I can string a length of fence pretty efficiently. I had to use a small cedar tree for the other end of the come-along because I couldn't get the Kia up into that corner, but it worked fine. This morning I read more articles (I've already read a ton) about raising goats and how overbuilt everything has to be. They're "escape artists" and can push with amazing force against anything in their way, including closed barn doors and fences that separate them from a morsel of brush that's caught their eye. I've tried to compensate for that by putting my T-posts closer than recommended and using extra clips, but I'm prepared to add even more of both if I see a problem developing.

Before lunch we went to University Fellowship Church in south Eugene. Further than we'd like to drive, but that may be unavoidable. The music portion of the service was good - high production values without feeling like a production. The pastor, who looks to be in his late 50's, preached a sermon that was, IMO, good, both from the perspective of form and content. Biblical, thought provoking, clear point, obvious progression, good application/take-away.

It's a big church, with probably close to 400 people there on a holiday weekend. Nobody except the greeter at the door talked to us, but that's not unusual in a church that size. I went up to the pastor afterward explained that we were looking for a church home, and asked, "How can we get to know more about this church?" He suggested we meet for coffee or lunch after we're back from AZ and he's back from the vacation they're going on tomorrow. Done.

When I taught homiletics (the art of writing and delivering sermons) for 10 years I had a wide variety of students. The first semester was all classwork, theory. In the second through fourth semesters they preached sermons in class that were critiqued and graded, with rising expectations as they honed their craft.
(I told very nervous students prior to their first in-class sermon that if they got through it without wetting their pants they should consider it a success. Lower expectations, build confidence.)

One year we got about four weeks into the theory semester and one of the guys in the pastoral degree track withdrew from the class. As the dept. chair he had to have my signature to drop a course req'd for the degree, which gave me an opportunity to ask him his reasons for withdrawing from the first course in a series critical to his degree.
He told me he didn't think preaching required all the technical matters we were discussing. He believed that if he was fully yielded to and guided by the Holy Spirit the mundane matters of preparation and delivery were not just irrelevant, they were distractions.

That mindset apparently spread to the rest of his coursework, because before the semester had gone much further, he had.  He dropped out of school, and to my knowledge did not go into ministry of any kind. That didn't surprise me; he had an attitude of superiority that looked down on his classmates as at a lower level of spirituality.

Besides that, he was wrong. Preaching is part art and part science. No matter how good and biblical the content, if it's delivered poorly, verbally and/or non-verbally, the medium can obscure the message. (Apologies to Marshall McLuhan.) The Greeks are credited with originating what we call oratory, and in the two millennia since then we've figured out what works and what doesn't work, both re. structure and delivery.

I have a VERY high regard for what's called the homiletical event - preaching the sermon. A man stands before God's people and proclaims, "Thus saith the Lord." Sloppiness of any kind is not just bad craft, it's sinful misfeasance for which, I believe, he will answer in eternity. He is a steward, given a sacred trust that he dare not do less than give his very best, and more. Yes, the work of the Spirit is beyond essential, but he works through individuals who must do everything to maximize the possibility for effectiveness. Nothing that hinders.

This last year, listening to as many sermons as we've heard in a pretty wide variety of settings, has me wondering if they even teach homiletics anymore. I'm surprised how often I can't discern any structure, and/or proposition (thesis, in the terms of writing). How rarely there's a clear application, any take-away that says, "this is how this biblical truth should affect your life."

It is our routine for me to ask as we drive to lunch, "Well?" That's our shorthand for asking, "What do you think the point of that sermon was, what was he trying to get at?" And it has also become routine for Pam to say, "I don't know. He said all kinds of stuff but I don't know what his point was."

That is, also in our verbal shorthand, it was a shotgun blast, not a bullet.
They never learned that first, basic step of writing an effective sermon (or read Haddon Robinson, to name one of many venerable homelticians who press that issue).

Those who want to preach in the worst way usually do.

Note: again, this morning was a refreshing exception. Pam had no trouble giving me his proposition/thesis, to wit, "God sometimes uses surprising methods to reveal his will for us." She could even identify the three ways that was modeled in his look at Acts 14-15.
Yes, we'll go back.