Hard Work

The hardest part of my ministry at Unidos por Cristo isn't the two-hour drive there. It's not the fact that it's cross-cultural or in a different language. It's certainly not planning bible study or the youth group's meetings. What I have to put the most work into are my sermons. Most pastors have all week to write them, finishing them Saturday night, maybe even rewriting on Sunday morning.

My Grandpa, a retired Methodist elder, recently told me the story of when my mom was young and was asked when her dad wrote his sermons. Her answer? Saturday night in front of the television watching hockey. In the 1960s (and probably at least into the 1980s), Grandpa hand-wrote and revised his sermons during the week and typed them on the typewriter Saturday night watching the Philadelphia Flyers play.

I don't have the luxury of a typewriter or of waiting until Saturday night. Because Spanish is my second language and I want to make the Word as plain as possible, I have editing help with my sermons. My accent may get in the way. I may talk too fast. The youth in the back row will laugh when I stumble over a word, which will inevitably happen. But I want the words I'm trying to say to be right. My deadline for sermon writing is Thursday lunch. By Thursday lunch, I email the week's sermon either to Rev. Luis Reinoso, another retired Methodist elder, or to Ms. Idia Piacenti, an administrative assistant at Duke Divinity School for the Thriving Rural Church Initiative and the Hispanic House of Studies. They review my grammar, my word choice, my verb conjugations, my word order, etc. and email the corrected version back to me by Saturday lunch. I then print it out and read it out loud at least once before putting it in my bag for Sunday morning.

For me, sermon writing is work. I have to make myself sit at the computer and type my notes (in Spanish). I read the commentaries and translate them and add them to my notes. Yes, I write my sermons in Spanish; it saves time and energy to just do it in one language. The Spanish spell-check helps a lot. But I have to make myself sit and write the sermon. Nothing else I do as a pastora requires so much self-discipline to get it done.

What I am most looking forward to about my Sunday off next week (Oct 10) is not writing a sermon!