Group Process (Oh, How I Hate It)
This is me doing standup. I'm good with microphones. As a preacher, I learned to tell stories from my heart, to invite people into my inner pilgrimage and entice them to accompany me on my quest for awhile. During my second (and ultimately successful) attempt at ordination, several pastors came to observe me preaching a sermon. They took me out to lunch afterward, and one of them told me, "What you do is very powerful. Please use it for good." It gave me pause, made me think about Virgil Howard, one of my preaching models back in seminary, and a sermon he had delivered in the seminary chapel that was so revealing that, even as I was enthralled, I felt my skin crawl. I have wondered ever since if that sermon, however effective it was at delivering its message (I believe it was about overcoming fear), went too far, maybe even committed a kind of emotional assault. I preached revelatory sermons for many years, talking about my inner struggles, fears, inadequacies, using...