At the first “In conclusion”, my heart leapt with relief.
Eighteen minutes later and the third time the preacher said “In conclusion”, my heart sank in despair.
You can only take so many false starts of when a boring sermon is about to end before you feel like you’ll go insane.
And there still were a few more “In conclusions” to go that day.
I’ve sat through many a boring sermon in my time. We all have. It’s part of life.
The preacher can’t be expected to hit a home run at every ballgame. Some sermons have you at the edge of the pew, hands clenched, tears welling, heart swaying. Others are a regular sort of good or entertaining.
That’s OK.
And there are guest speakers now and then. Sometimes they’re great and get you all riled up for the better. Sometimes their level of delivery is — well, to put it nicely, their sermons have the great advantage of really making you not take your own preacher so much for granted.
Then there was what my daughter and I sat through a few weeks back. The preacher was one of those yelling preachers, and usually a yelling sermon can be pretty entertaining, but this one was just plain loud.
How is it that words can just keep coming at you and coming at you and coming at you but yet even in the midst of the sermon you can’t quite recall what it’s about?
Why is it that the people who have the least to say take the longest to say it?
It’s one of the tests of life: How outwardly we can project a look of interest, courtesy and even inspiration while inside we are shriveling up in tedium and frustration.
I faked it for as long as I possibly could until finally I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something to pass the time or I’d never make it out of church. So I did the only thing that is acceptable to do in church: I opened the Bible and began to read.
I read Revelations, because it always comes through in a pinch when you need a little fun.
Yet I kept sneaking glances at my teenage daughter. She was doing everything right: sitting attentively with a polite look of interest on her face.
Each time I glanced over there, I was impressed.
“If she makes it until the end of church, I’m going to give her $20,” I told myself.
Even as I was ashamed at myself for not being able to sit through it, I was impressed by her.
At the end of church (the guest preacher ran over by 25 minutes – no surprise there), I stealthily passed her a $20 bill.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“For keeping your composure and paying attention throughout that entire never-ending sermon,” I replied.
“But that’s what you’re supposed to do in church,” she answered.
Wow! All my years of training, and of forcing when she claimed not to be in the mood, had come to fruition. She was a good girl; I was a proud mama.
“You earned it this time!” I said, explaining how I had come up with the plan to pay her $20.
She took it with a chuckle.
Now and then, a topic legitimately does require a whole lot of explanation of details to get everything put together in just the right way.
But most topics are more powerful if they are short and to the point. Wow your audience with something profound, then say goodbye before the rest gets so boring that the impact of the great part is overshadowed by tedium.
Throughout the years I have jotted down the names of really excellent preachers worth making the effort to hear again.
This time, for the first time ever, I jotted down that preacher’s name to remember – to avoid.
