ELM (Educating Lay Ministry) Class - "Preach-A-Thon"

I've been remiss once again and haven't blogged much lately.  Several times I've thought about coming over and posting an update but for one reason or another I just didn't get over to get it done.

So here's the run down on the Churches we've visited lately:
Sunday before Easter - St. Paul's Lutheran
Maundy Thursday - St. Paul's Lutheran
Easter Sunday - Benson Baptist
Sunday after Easter - First Baptist Church of Omaha
Today - well today we slept in and skipped church

This weekend (April 12 & 13) was the ELM programs 'Preach-A-Thon' for those of us in ELM 7. We were each given a section of verses from the book of Acts and asked to prepare a sermon on that scripture.  It was a very interesting program with so many different styles and deliveries rifled one after another.  Six of us preached on Friday night and the remaining eight preached on Saturday. (one of our class members wasn't able to attend this class and will have to make it up when the class is offered again)

I was the fourth to preach on Friday night and I covered the first fourteen verses of the first chapter.  I do have a disc with the sermon but for some reason it won't load directly to the blog.  I'll have to try and remember how to use 'Youtube'.  I set up an account on there months ago but haven't logged on since so I'll have to go and mess with that later in the week.

All in all it was a good class though pretty stressful and exhausting.

After having spent all evening Friday and much of Saturday listening to Sermons I decided to forgo Church today in lieu of getting some extra shut eye.  For the last three days I've run on very little sleep and it was really catching up to me so I opted to get a couple extra hours of sleep today.  I spent some quiet time instead reading in the Bible and reading some prayers to myself.  Honestly after spending so much time immersed in the stress of the 'Preach-A-Thon' I needed some time to de-load and re-load.  Listening intently to that many sermons is honestly a great deal of work.  And when you add to that preaching a sermon before an instructor and your peers the stress is more than I bargained for.

Today, we all three ran downtown today to attend a 'Health & Fitness Expo' down at the CenturyLink Center.  It was a real disappointment to me as most of the stuff (99%) had little to do with either health or fitness.  We ended up buying Gail a dress and Maddie a handbag... certainly NOT what I expected to come away from the event with.  Not going to bother with attending this expo in the future.  (unless I decide I need a pet psychic or I want to learn about my past lives that is... LOL)

On our way there I got a phone call asking me to Preach at a church in a nearby town on the first weekend of May.  Which I gladly accepted, now I need to set about writing a sermon for them.  I don't think the sermon I used in Hasting would be the best fit for this particular congregation so I will come up with something new.  Since it will be 'communion sunday' for them I may well cover the meaning and symbolism of communion.  It's a small congregation and I rather suspect that they've scarcely if ever have been exposed to a message of communion beyond the 'sacrificial sacrifice'.  More than likely that's the direction I'll take but I'll continue to pray and meditate over it and see if that's the direction I'm supposed to take on that given day for that given congregation.

I had a good workout this evening.  I had taken a week off in order to let my shoulders have a bit of a break, and it had been many months since I'd taken anytime off so it was much needed.  Tonight I decided to completely switch up my program and threw in all new movements for chest and back.  I'll keep my heavy leg/ab night, arms/shoulder night, and light leg/ab night the same, but chest/back had been stalling out on me so it was time for a switch up.

One of the members of our ELM group asked all of us in ELM to commit to saying the Lord's Prayer everyday for 40 days.  This isn't a problem for me as I've been known to pray the Lord's Prayer several times a day.  I've kind of gotten away from that recently so perhaps it was a good reminder for me to get back into the habit of just dropping it into my day whenever I can.

And I will close this blog post with another photo of a lovely country church.

May you all be blessed!

In His Absolute Grace and Forgiveness,
Roy

What an amazingly beautiful photograph!