Connecting

As a pastor I regularly agonize over the sermon I'll be giving on the next Sunday. But it doesn't stop there. I agonize after I've given the sermon too. At least for a little while.

There is an interesting phenomenon that many pastors experience that goes something like this. The worse you feel about your sermon the more likely people will tell you how good it was and how it was the right message at the right time. Likewise, the better you feel about your sermon the more likely it was a flop.

One way to explain this is to bring the Holy Spirit into it. The logic would be that the Holy Spirit can take any sermon, no matter how bad it may be, and move people's hearts with it. But the pastor who feels really good about his sermon needs to be humbled so the Holy Spirit is not as active following such a sermon.

I suppose it could also be that it is revealing a disconnect between the pastor and the congregation. He is touching chords that he is not seeing on the one hand and playing chords in the other instance that are relevant only to him.

Of course, it could also be that the entire phenomenon is a figment of the imaginations of a collective of pastors who are paranoid and uptight. Why does this option seem so much more likely?