The Sunday I Gave My Worst Sermon Ever
Not because the content was bad, but because I spoke from Fear and Ego, and tried to control a spiraling church schism.
On Sunday, March 24th, 2019, I gave what I can now call the worst sermon I’ve ever delivered.
Not from a content or delivery perspective. But from a failure to read the room and using the pulpit to try and control a narrative. A crisis was brewing in our congregation and my frightened ego had more influence on what I preached that day than was wise.
It’s taken me years to fully digest what transpired, but now I think back on that morning with equal parts cringe, shame, and sadness.
So naturally, I want to write about it. Such is the blessing/curse of the writer/memoirist.
(I will say upfront that I’ve tried to make amends with the ones I hurt the most that morning. I don’t know if I’ve gotten to all of them, so in the event anyone ends up reading this who remembers that sermon, and remembers feeling not-okay with it, please know that I’m sorry. Your unease made and makes sense.)
The Situation Surrounding that Horrible Sermon
It’s hard to tell the story of that horrible sermon without giving a full picture of the context that led to it. And it’s hard to give the full context without telling stories that aren’t (exclusively or wholly) mine to tell. So forgive me if part of this feels unsatisfactory and/or vague. The story may only kind of make sense because you won’t be able to fully comprehend the context, but I think that’s okay. You’ll get it enough.
However, there is a risk when leaving some gaps unfilled. I’m opening myself up to you making certain assumptions or drawing conclusions that aren’t real or true. But in the name of privacy, those are risks I accept.
Okay enough throat clearing. Here’s what I’ll say regarding the events leading up to that absurd sermon I preached.
Five weeks prior to Sunday, March 24th, we had a disastrous Elder Board meeting involving emotional disruptions, deep disagreements, and hurt feelings.
All of which were made worse by my lack of leadership.
You see, at that point our church was about five years old and I was still serving as the Chair of the Board. It’s not uncommon in the church and in the non-profit world for the leader/president/pastor to also run the Board in the organization’s infancy, but I really should have transitioned out of that role by year five. Trying to run a Board, lead a church, and co-pastor with a spouse was a recipe for disaster.
And boy did disaster strike.
Many painful things resulted from the fallout of that tragic Board meeting, but germane to this article I’ll just say that the immediate impact was: a Board member resigned, multiple families left the church, and we lost some of my dearest and closest friends.
In fact, 2019 was such an awful year (because of the fallout) that personally, the pandemic isolation of 2020 was a welcome respite.
Details of that infamous Board meeting, and what led to the eruption and eventual exodus of key families and close friends, shall remain private. But I can tell you that I have many regrets about the choices I made during that time. Looking back I can see how some of my instincts and intentions were noble, but the impact of certain choices had devastating consequences. While trying to defend and protect someone I loved, I hurt and alienated other people I loved.
That makes me sound better than I was… so let me be clear: those efforts to “defend and protect someone I loved” were not executed perfectly by any means. I had a lot to learn about conflict resolution, power dynamics, communication, listening, boundary setting, and leadership. A bull may have the purest of intentions (oh look! he’s shopping for his mother! how sweet), and yet his clumsy and bulky frame is still the primary reason there is shattered china all over the shop’s floor.
Still Gotta Preach, Tho
Anyway, 2019 sucked rocks for me (and many others) in the church, but here is one of the many wonderfully bizarre (aka, ridiculously stressful) things about pastoral work. Every seven days you have to show up and do your thing regardless of life’s circumstances.
So in the spring of 2019, even though our church was on the verge of a split, I still had to write and deliver a sermon practically every Sunday morning.
As I see it, sermons should at the very least be an outflow of the heart and soul of the preacher. We spend hours during the week opening ourselves to what God would want to say through us, then we try and organize that in an interesting/compelling/engaging way so that we can eventually face one of humanity’s biggest fears (public speaking) and deliver what hopefully is a message inspired and sustained by the Spirit.
That’s the hope. The ideal.
But in reality, for many preachers, life and stress and chaos and constraints all conspire together to muck up that process. To interrupt or even corrupt the flow. Now yes, sometimes sermons are aided by the real-life intrusion of events and emotions. But other times a sermon suffers because too much of the preacher’s own crud blocks the flow of the Spirit.
And what I’m getting at is, on Sunday March 24th, 2019, the accumulating crud of navigating the chaos of friends and (chosen) family leaving the church over grievances that—in many ways—I agreed with yet couldn’t do anything about, absolutely impacted my sermon. Not in the good way.
Which helps to explain why I delivered a sermon in which:
Fear was the primary author,
My Ego was the leading character,
I wrapped some otherwise-interesting nuggets of truth into a larger ball of trying to control the narrative,
I wounded and alienated dear friends of mine, and
It took me an embarrassingly long number of years to admit all of this.
