dCyPl's Discipleship

I have been given an amazing opportunity to serve God, through the efforts of one of the older members of our church. Rolf is a beautiful, christ centered man, who has worked as a relief pastor for many churches around the Hunter Valley and Newcastle. His life is inspirational, and he has no need to mince his words.... he believes what he says, and says what he believes.

Now Rolf is getting old, as are some of the other men who are helping out with this work in the region.... not to mention the state of aging clergy in the mainstream churches in Australia. So Rolf hatched a plan, with Greg our senior pastor, that some of the young guys at church, (yes I was still considered young enough to be included in this group, maybe I was the token married with kids demographic?), that we would train up to preach a couplke of sermons a year as required at some of these churches around the region. Primarily for pastors to take leave or in emergencies when there was illness etc, we would, sometimes at short notice, sterp in and run the service and preach.

Well, this all sounded like a good sensible well thought out plan, a good opportunity to learn, a good opportunity for our church to serve the wider community, and it seemed that there would be plenty of time to prepare. Sometimes God has a very different idea of what we need, or are capable of.

So about three weeks after this meeting, just when I'm thinking, "well maybe I should start preparing a sermon for maybe in a few months time, and hopefully there will be a training session where we can discuss our ideas soon" , Rolf rings up Robyn and says, (in his German accent, "Hey ah Robyn, would ah Mike be able to preach a couple of Sundays at Stockton?"
Robyn replied, "Sure Rolf, that sounds great, just let us know the details".

Anyway, I had three weeks to prepare for, with the first only three weeks after that conversation. Not only the sermons, but the whole running of the services as well!

Well I'm now one week into the three, and tomorrow is my second sermon. I'm preaching on Hebrews 1 for the three weeks, which has been challenging in some ways, but easy in others, I've been able to focus my talks down to approximately one verse for each sermon, and am glad for that!