Tag Archives: layspeaking

Sep 21

‘So You Want To Go Back To Egypt’

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Mt. Carmel UMC
Sept. 21, 2008

Exodus 16:2-15
16:2 The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
16:3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
16:4 Then the LORD said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.
16:5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.”
16:6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you shall know that it was the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
16:7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your complaining against the LORD. For what are we, that you complain against us?”
16:8 And Moses said, “When the LORD gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the LORD has heard the complaining that you utter against him–what are we? Your complaining is not against us but against the LORD.”
16:9 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, ‘Draw near to the LORD, for he has heard your complaining.’”
16:10 And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud.
16:11 The LORD spoke to Moses and said,
16:12 “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’”
16:13 In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.
16:14 When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground.
16:15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.”

In this passage, the Hebrew slaves had been freed from the rule of Pharaoh, and were moving through the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. But when we pick up the story, the Israelites are beginning to complain. Yes, we’re no longer slaves, but the food seems to be running short and we’re out here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe we were better off back in Egypt, where at least we had bread and meat. The slaves remembered sitting next to the “flesh pots” — which were big kettles that were used by the Egyptians to boil meat – and eating their fill.
Of course, the Bible doesn’t tell us that anyone was actually dying of hunger. I suspect that what the Israelites were worried about wasn’t anyone going hungry today – it was more that they were worried about where the food would come from tomorrow. They were living on the edge, from day to day, and it scared them. Continue reading →

Sep 19

Lay speaking class

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The dates are finally set. I will be teaching the basic (local church) United Methodist lay speaking class at 6 p.m. on Wednesday nights, Oct. 8 through Dec. 17, not including the week of Thanksgiving. The class will be at Scott’s Chapel UMC in Shelbyville. We will have a special wrapup event in January on a date to be agreed upon by the participants.

Sep 16

Upcoming events

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As some of you know, my co-worker Doug Dezotell (who has been an ordained minister but isn’t from a United Methodist background) was called into the United Methodist ministry earlier this year and now pastors Mt. Lebanon UMC. He still works at the paper but is part-time, with the title of newsroom clerk.

Anyway, Doug is traveling to visit family this weekend and so I will be layspeaking at Mt. Lebanon, which is located west of Shelbyville a little ways north of State Route 64. The service is at 9:30 if any of you within reach would like to come.

I do not have such specific information about the layspeaking class I’m supposed to be teaching this fall. I’m still waiting for them to tie down the specific dates so that we can start getting the word out and so that I can block out the dates on my calendar. I think we’ve settled on the location, but I won’t mention it until we have everything tied down. If we wait too much longer, there won’t be much time to promote the class and still get it finished before the holidays.

Jul 31

Hello, Mr. Chips

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Tennessee Technology Center at Shelbyville has announced its fall schedule, including various computer courses. One of these, at the very bottom, is a course described this way:

Intro to Blogging – Covers how to start a blog, use RSS and Twitter

The class will run Sept. 18 and 25 from 6-8 in the evening. Apparently, they had trouble finding someone to teach it, because they settled on this guy.

Meanwhile, the specifics haven’t been worked out yet, but it now looks as if I’m going to teach a United Methodist lay speaking basic course this fall at a church in Shelbyville. That one will have more than two sessions — instead of teaching the basic course over a full weekend or two consecutive Saturdays, the Murfreesboro District is going to try holding it on a weeknight, over a span of weeks, as part of the host church’s regular schedule of (typically) Wednesday night activities.

This will be the first time I’ve ever taught either of these courses. In both cases, I was approached and asked to teach; neither was my idea. We’ll see how it goes.

May 13

Annual Conference

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Layspeakers, as the term applies in the United Methodist Church, are not ordained clergy but are volunteers who have been approved by the church for preaching and other ministry within the church. They may fill in for a pastor on vacation, for example. They are sometimes pressed into service for even longer periods, although in that case an ordained minister must be available for sacraments like communion or baptism which layspeakers aren’t authorized to officiate.

For a number of years now, the Tennessee Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, the governing body for Middle Tennessee, has had one evening during its annual meeting when layspeakers were honored. This year, for the first time, a layspeaker will be asked to preach during that evening’s service, on June 10 at Murfreesboro First United Methodist.

The conference asked for applications earlier this year from layspeakers interested in delivering that sermon. There were 23 sermons submitted, from which a short list of four was compiled. The four finalists delivered their sermons Saturday for the selection committee.

I would tell you who got picked, but modesty forbids.

May 08

Got the call

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I got home from the symphony concert and I had three messages on my answering machine. Two of them were much-appreciated birthday greetings from family members, featuring nieces and nephews who always bring a smile to my face.

The third message was from a representative of the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church.

A good while back, I submitted a sermon for consideration in the selection process for the first-ever layspeaker to preach during Annual Conference.

I’ve made the short list, apparently, and they want me to come to Franklin this Saturday and give my sermon for the selection committee.

Feb 26

Croaking out a sermon

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Certified layspeakers who want to preach this June at the Tennessee Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church can either submit a manuscript or a video, or both, for consideration. Naturally, I assumed a video would carry more weight, and my father, a retired UM pastor, was looking forward to taping me.

But the deadline is Monday, and my voice is still torn up. So I’m going to have to go the manuscript route. I think I’ve got it done; I’m giving printouts to my father and to my pastor at church tomorrow night; I may or may not wait for their feedback before sending off my envelope.

This is the first time they’ve asked a layspeaker to preach during laity night at Conference, which is the annual gathering of United Methodist pastors and church leaders from throughout Middle Tennessee. They will sift through the submissions and draw up a short list, and then the finalists will have to preach their sermons for the selection committee. (My voice will, of course, have cleared up long before they get to that point.) They plan to make this an annual event and have already said that this year’s speaker will be a member of next year’s selection committee.

I don’t suppose I have much chance, but it’s fun to try.

Feb 03

Do I have a chance?

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I was complaining in this space Friday night that I thought I’d done a very poor job speaking about LEAMIS at the annual district layspeaking banquet.

And yet, I have bigger fish to fry.

For some reason — not that I have any chance whatsoever of delivering it — I have decided to try to write a sermon for this summer’s Tennessee Annual Conference. You see, this year, for the first time ever, the sermon on the night that they traditionally honor laity will be given by a lay speaker. (What a concept!) They have sent letters out to all of the certified lay speakers in the conference inviting us to submit a written sermon and/or a video if we are interested in being considered.

Call me Don Quixote, but I’m going to try to write a sermon for this. I’m playing around with some ideas, within the stated topic that they gave us in the letter (“Beyond the Walls: Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World”).

A search committee will come up with a short list of three, and the three finalists will get the chance to preach their sermon to the committee.

If nothing else, it will be a fun exercise. And, hey, if the Giants can beat those no-good cheaters from Massachusetts, anything’s possible. :)

Feb 01

Rush job

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I am sure that, at some point in the preparation for tonight’s Layspeaker and Lay Leader banquet, I was told that our presentations should be about 7 minutes each. Five speakers times 7 minutes equals 35 minutes; add a little transition time, and maybe someone goes over a minute or two, and you have a 45-minute program. Sounds about right. Much beyond that and people start to lose interest.

The trouble is, if you’re passionate about something, it’s hard to boil it down to 7 minutes. I went back and forth in my mind about how to hit the highlights of LEAMIS, my experience with LEAMIS, and to briefly address the fact that the people we’ve worked with in Kenya have been affected by the recent violence but are still personally uninjured.

But the first speaker got up tonight and went for 25 minutes on the dot. The second went for 10 minutes. There goes your 35-minute window right there.

The first speaker is, I’m sure, a fine man, and the ministry about which he was speaking is fantastic. But it’s just rude to go that far over your allotted time slot and take that much of people’s attention when you know there are other speakers following you.

I was next, and I tried to keep to what I had understood was the time frame. (I can’t find it in any of my written correspondence; it’s possible that what was said was 7-10 minutes.) I think I did about 8 or 9 minutes. It sounded rushed and shallow; I’m sure I was the least effective of the five speakers, and I feel like I let LEAMIS down, but I also suspect that it’s because I was the only one who made a concerted effort to stay within the time frame.

That sounds petty, and selfish, and I guess in fact it is petty and selfish. But I had to vent anyway.

Otherwise, the banquet was nice enough, although several of the people I looked forward to seeing weren’t there. Jim and Emily Austin (who was responsible for me speaking in the first place) weren’t there because Jim is under the weather, and Don Ladd was also not there due to health issues as well. Art and Stacie, with whom I sat at last year’s banquet, weren’t there either. I was sitting at a table by myself, and Tom and Nita Wright took pity on me and came over and sat with me.

It’s been a long week; I’m glad it’s Friday (although Friday means less than it used to now that I have to work a couple of hours every Saturday).

Do I sound like I have a bad attitude?

Jan 04

Banquetized

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Well, December has come and gone, and it occurred to me the other day that we’d not had the traditional Murfreesboro District United Methodist layspeakers’ and lay leaders’ banquet. For some reason, I had it in my head that the banquet was held during the holidays, although I see from my blog post last year that it was in February.

Today, I got an e-mail from our district layleader, Jim Austin. The banquet will be held Feb . 1. The reason he was e-mailing me about it is that instead of a clergy speaker this year, they’re going to have a series of layspeakers give brief (7-minute) presentations about some project or activity in which they’ve been involved this year. The lovely Emily “Auntie Em” Austin had recommended me. I agreed to speak; I’m not certain whether it will be about my foreign mission trips or about Mountain T.O.P. (which might have more of a United Methodist tie-in). I told Jim to put me on the program and I would let him know in a day or two what my little corner of the program would be. ;)