Preachers around our city, country and world stand up each Sunday to echo God’s life-giving and powerful Word to gatherings of sheep. They stand before people in need of nourishment, in need of encouragement to press on in Jesus’ footsteps, in need of assurance that trust is rightly placed in Him, in need of a clear word to call them back from straying, in need of a seeing again the Lord God, Father, Son and Spirit in all His glory, love, wisdom and grace. They’ve laboured in the text and on their knees, with the Spirit to guide, and made use of some tools to understand what God says and to bring it on Sunday with conviction and engagement.
Sometimes they go home on Sunday, gladly spent from their labour and love for the flock, not just this day but the hours in their study, in prayer, and at kitchen tables and hospital bedsides. They’ll start again tomorrow and are thankful for the privilege and spiritual rigour and richness of their vocation.
Sometimes though, it’s a lonely vocation. There’s a church family to love and be loved by, perhaps a wife and family, hopefully friends, but the work itself can be lonely, especially in a solo-pastor church. Where can a sounding board be found? Where can constructive feedback on sermons come from so there’s growth as a preacher, encouragement in the privileged task of opening the Word with and for people, recognition and avoidance of bad habits or hobby horses that distract? How often can a preacher sit in church and be fed, be ministered to?
A preaching conference is not church but reflecting on the conference in Armidale some months back and anticipating the one on the near horizon in Wahroonga, such a gathering and ministry has much to help such preachers. Perhaps you are one. Perhaps you are not gladly spent but simply spent. Perhaps you are distracted by so many other pressing needs you’ve squashed preaching into a bite of the week too small to match its weight and significance. Perhaps you know a preacher who needs encouragement and fellowship in the preaching task (and I dare say that’s everyone who knows a preacher!).
The conference in Armidale was a time of warmth among brothers and sisters labouring in different places to bring the Word of God to people from Sunday pulpits, in school classrooms and at women’s gatherings. Here were people who know what this work is like and could share its joys and sorrows. Here are people different to one another in many ways but with a shared passion to see God’s Word proclaimed, who could listen to each other preach and offer feedback, insights, new angles on approach to sharpen and encourage one another. Here are people to share meals with and hear of what God is doing in other neighbourhoods, to share ideas, to learn wisdom. Perhaps most of all, here was time to sit in the pew instead of stand behind the pulpit, and be fed. I was convicted of sin; saw afresh the wonder of God’s love, grace and beauty; stirred to take this momentous news of Christ as Lord with renewed vigour to neighbours; and comforted and encouraged that our work is the Lord’s and He is abundantly able.
Janet Riley