What are they really thinking?

A couple of days ago I read an hilarious "prayer request" at Lark News where the requester was asking for prayer that his pastor would stop his "in-depth" study of Matthew. After all, three and a half years was long enough.

Ever since I read that I thought what it would be like to know what people thought of my sermons. I really don't want to know, mind you, it would probably be too much to take. No, I'll stick to positive feed back, thank you.

Of course, in my mind all my sermons are excellent, well crafted pieces of art. They have been thoroughly researched and prayed over. I love the whole process of preparing, revising, re-revising, cutting, pasting and finally delivering a sermon. However, I am all to well aware that there may be those in my congregation who are praying similar prayers to the one above although on a minute to minute basis.

The fact is my sermons are simply words. I try to do the best I can. I do pray over them. I pour my heart into them. But human words are limited. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes the connections. Sometimes he uses my sermons for that but he often does so in spite of them.

In the end I'll keep turning them out week after week. I'll continue to do the best I can. I hope they connect with people and bring a little light into their world. But I'll still do without knowing their true feelings.

It's not that I haven't had my sermons criticized before either. But it has always been from the usual suspects and somehow I can deal with that. What would be hard is to hear the bad news from someone I thought was on my side. Someone who was truly seeking answers and who was relying on me to bring some clarity. I would hate to let someone like that down.