As a certified United Methodist lay speaker, I must take an advanced class every three years in order to retain my certification. I usually try to take a class every other year or so, so I don’t find myself in a bind. There are various topics, but usually only one or two offered at a time. You can take the same class over again if you like or if that’s the only one being offered (and, quite frankly, you usually get something new out of it each time).
I have told several people that I was in a bind this year, and that I have to take the layspeaking class this weekend in Monteagle. Just now, while looking for something else in my blog archives, I found a post about the last class I took — and it was in 2007, two years ago. So I actually wasn’t under the gun this year.
No matter. I am looking forward to the class for several reasons. This is the first time I can recall the class for the Murfreesboro District being held in an overnight format, and I’m looking forward to being at the DuBose Conference Center. Mountain T.O.P. held part of its adult ministry there for a number of years, and I have really fond memories of the place.
I also discovered this week that my Kenya teammate Bob Willems will be in the class, so that will be good as well.
This class is entitled “Go Preach!”, and it’s basically an updated version (with new curriculum) of a class I’ve taken a couple of times before. I’ve actually met the author of the textbook before, and he’s a good fellow, but I have to say I’ve gotten a little frustrated with him while reading the book. He’s extremely dogmatic in a couple of places and lists some preparatory steps as hard-and-fast requirements which, at least in my experience, a lay speaker may not have time or opportunity to do. And he flat-out says, at the end of the book, that if you don’t have time to follow all the steps he’s laid out, you should turn down any request to lay speak!
It’s not that his ideas are bad ones at all — quite the contrary. But I don’t think they have the status of dealbreakers.
He talks, for example, about doing a sort of interview so that you can determine the demographic breakdown and faith history of a church, allowing you to tailor a sermon to meet it. Of course, he cites worst-case scenarios where some preacher uses a pop culture reference which no one in the audience gets, or where a preacher assumes basic familiarity with a Bible story which may not be as familiar to the target audience as it to the preacher.
Sure, stuff like that happens. But I think most lay speakers going into a new situation are going to try to write a sort of middle-of-the-road sermon which would avoid some of those worst-case scenarios in the first place. And I don’t find that there’s always a good opportunity to do that kind of research, especially when the call to preach comes on short notice.
Similarly, I try to write a new, fresh, lectionary-based sermon every time I preach — but the author of the book is pretty dogmatic about never, ever pulling a sermon out of your file and re-using it. If I were called today (Thursday) and asked to preach somewhere on Sunday, I would certainly write a new sermon from scratch. but if I am called Saturday night by a preacher who has suddenly been taken ill (and I’ve been called as late as 7 a.m. Sunday), I’m headed for the “Sermons and Devotionals” folder on my hard drive. I suspect most lay speakers would do the same, and I don’t think there’s a bit of shame in that.
Lay speaking is a great privilege, one I take seriously. I want to give it my best whenever I am called, whether my audience will be seven people or 700. I think the ideas in the textbook are good ones; I just think the author has confused some of his preferences with necessities.
