The message I preached for my small group, plus the invited guests did not go nearly as well as I had planned. I don't even mean that to say that it didn't go how I had hoped, I really mean that it didn't even go as well as when I had practiced it earlier in the evening.
The actual delivery was 10 minutes longer and had 40% different material than how I had practiced it.
When I finished, and was sitting in a different room so others could evaluate me, and I simply felt depressed. It just didn't feel like I had done a good job.
I'm still evaluating what to do with these feelings, but I don't think I did a good job with this sermon. There is a part of me that thinks I wasted too many people's time.
I'm being pretty harsh on myself, but that's pretty normal for me. Acknowledging that, I usually don't feel this depressed even when I know that a message has not gone well.
In time, I'll find something to learn from this experience that will make me a better communicator forever, I just hope that thing also helps me irradiate the depressing feeling I have.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
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2 comments:
Have you been able to figure out why you changed your sermon from the practice version? 40% different material may mean you weren't comfortable with the original version, or something during the sermon caused you to believe it needed changing. Being concerned that it didn't go as well as hoped is normal. Figuring out why it didn't go the way planned can be hard.
I don't know how the people that listened to your serman evaluated you but sometimes you are your own worst critic. Only you know that your serman was much different than you had originally practiced. I guess you need to think about what made you change 40% of you material. Did you not prepare as much as you should have, were you somehow uncomfortable with some of the original message, did something happen just before the sermon that made oyou change your delivery, were there people in the group that made you unsure about you original message? Maybe you should focus on why you thought it was necessary to change your prepared message.
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