Settling In

I'm getting used to this blogging business I guess, hence the long delay in posting. It's been a good few weeks though - busy but good. I've now been asked by parishioners at two of my churches (with utter seriousness) whether they were hearing a bit of an English accent in me when I presided or preached at the service. Ha! I can only assume that is coming from my choral training in High School and College - they teach you techniques and diction that helps you project and be understood better. I have noted, though, that the distinction between English and American accents burrs for me when listening to different music groups, so maybe there's something in that. Neat thought anyways.

I'm still filling out my weekly schedule. I'm working about 40 hours a week even though I'm told I should be leveling off at 50-60 hours per week. Well, I'm certainly not going to complain in the meantime - 40 hours isn't nothing. However, I've got a few weekly events coming online in the near future that I'm going to be overseeing.

I am having an interesting time getting used to preaching on a regular basis. It is revealing to me how easy it is for me to slip into preaching the same sermon over and over, simply using the text of the day to put it into a new costume. I'm finding it is taking more creativity than I had anticipated to articulate the Gospel in completely new ways each sermon. This'll probably be a growing edge for me for some time.

I was quite embarrassed to find out that my supervisor has already picked up on my forgetful and tardy streak. It comes from being a bit ADD I guess, and I really don't like it. I have my good weeks, of course, but then comes the bad weeks when I really let my guard down and get absorbed in projects. Ah well, at the least I can say that I gave them fair warning.

I miss my college days, and seminary as well. It's so much more fun doing all this thinking stuff when you have no responsibility except to your own GPA. As it is, I'm now responsible for what a great many people hear about God in any given week. That I find this intimidating is probably a good sign, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant.

Brief Post

A good friend of mine lost his brother in the last few days to tragedy.
Please keep him and his family in your prayers.

Beginning of Internship

Eight churches, six pastors, sermons every other Sunday, presiding whenever I'm not preaching, and getting to each of these churches every five Sundays (Being at two churches 3 Sundays out of 5), and it all began yesterday. I suspect that sentence would be enough to make your head spin trying to get your head around it, and I'm kind of doing that myself as I settle into my new position. I really loved meeting the people at the first church yesterday, and they seemed delighted to have me there - I even clicked decently with the teenagers there! And... I'm not going to be at their services again until the first Sunday in October. In the meantime, I'm going to go through the same experience at the other churches.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying this site already. My supervisor and I are on the same page theologically, ecclesiologically, in our view of the ministry, and we're both pretty easy going. He's someone I'm confident I'll be able to get along with famously for the next year. The other pastors I work with regularly are pretty fun too, and I can see myself learning boatloads being side by side with them all rather than being with just one pastor. Besides, with so many pastor-intern relationships going sour due to any number of reasons, having multiple pastors to work with can only be a good thing!

I'm going to need to be growing into wearing my clerical collar shirts. They feel alien on me, and the kinds of glances I get from people on sidewalks makes me uncomfortable - what're they thinking? Maybe... "I didn't know I lived next to a PASTOR!" I'm pretty unpretensious as a pastor and am not interested in lording my status over others. If I'm pretensious about anything, it'd probably be a matter of intelligence rather than office (much as I'd rather not be pretensious about anything). I wear the collar mostly because I want to be taken seriously as a pastor from day 1, and the symbol of that collar goes a long distance to accomplishing this. However, it'll be coming off as soon as I'm done with the formal pastoral functions. I'm trying not to think about how weird it'll be to wear it around friends and family for now...

Anyways, today is Labor Day, so I'm now off to being done with all things work!