I recently ended a post with a quote from William Willimon, in which he states, “On any Sunday you can give it your all and still know that the Word deserves more.”  How true that is!  In my experience, the majority of preachers, the majority of the time, do not feel great after they have finished preaching.  Sometimes a sermon may leave us energized and excited.  Yet so often we feel vulnerable, weak, drained, even regretful.

The post-sermon interactions with folks are complex.  Some people have used the analogy of giving birth in reference to preaching (to which I quickly add that a shorter gestation, a shorter delivery, and the fact that it is not the same experience at all does slightly undermine the analogy – it’s too easy to minimize what some people go through in this kind of analogy!  My wife deserves much more credit for her birth-work than I do for mine!)

Perhaps we could pull in another analogy and then reduce it appropriately?  Think of a time of emotional trauma – a car accident, a death, a major moment in life (the verdict of a judge, the pronouncement of pass or fail in a major examination), etc.  In the time after a major emotional event, there is that time when things aren’t quite real, when words people say don’t register properly, when the slightest thing can mean too much.  Now reduce that life-sized grief, tension, emotion…reduce that down to the weekly experience that is preaching.  Post-sermon interactions with folk are complex.

Post-sermon emotions are complex.  Swirling feelings of failure, of inadequacy in representing such an awesome God, of having fallen short of really teaching that passage as it deserves.  This swirl of emotions is not the time to evaluate in detail, to make decisions regarding the future, or over-react to a small thing that, at least in that moment, means too much.

Cling on to the Lord’s hand, make a few notes, get through the turmoil time and then evaluate the comments, feedback, etc. on Tuesday morning.  You’ll probably be thinking clearly and reacting appropriately by then!