Friday, November 10, 2006

Flow creative juices, flow!!!

Ok, I am currently trying to get my mind around my sermon for this weekend. This is my first time preaching "in the big house" as we in the Youth Ministry profession call a Sunday morning church service. I've yakked at youth countless times (ok, I'm sure I could probably mathematically guess how many times actually, but it's a lot either way), but never actually done the real deal on Sunday morning. The closest I came was a couple years ago at a Bible Quizzing tournament, I spoke at their Sunday morning service at a camp...still not quite the same.
But as I sit here, you may be thinking "why are you wasting time blogging if you still need to work on your sermon?" This is a very intriguing and legitimate question so let me expound on my answer.
I sometimes experience a lack of creativity whilst I write, obviously not all THAT much because I"m a creative genious, I know, but sometimes it does still happen regardless of my almost unmeasurable intellect.
One thing that helps get those creative juices flowing is to just start writing. I'm not much of a writer, in fact if I were to take an English class again I would likely either fail because I couldn't stay awake or because my language skills leave something to be desired. I could really care less about conjugating a verb, or spelling conjugating right. I have no idea what people are talking about when they ask me to point out the adverb in a sentence.
I'm a talker. I wouldn't say preacher, or public speaker, I'm a talker. I like to talk (though some people may wonder when that is), when I get up in front of people, I'll ramble on about the newest nose hair trimmer and keep talking as if people are interested.
Anyway, back to my answer, writing something gets my mind working the way I want it to. So here I write, and as you've likely discovered so far, this post has no significance whatsoever and really isn't interesting well let me add something interesting, or at least slightly entertaining.

The other day I had the pleasure and privilege to spend a few hours with some visionaries within our denomination, a few senior pastors from around this area. Of course I've not much in common with such men: I'm young, they're less young. I'm new, they're seasoned veterans. I'm a youth pastor, they're all real pastors. I have red hair, they're all missing theirs. Ok, enough with the harsh realities as none of them will likely read this (unless that underhanded brother of mine passes it along to his sr. pastor). We actually did have a thing or two to talk about so that was good but not the purpose of my being there. There's a place not far from town here that is known as Blue Mountain (of course this is prairie land so it's obviously not a real mountain) and this place is an outdoor adventure centre. There are many things that one or 100 people can do to fill a day or more at this place. One of those activities is to defy death on the longest zipline in North America, if not the world.
Now if you don't know what a zipline is, let me explain. This is a cable that crosses over a valley and the rider is harnessed up and sent across the valley on said cable. Your top speed may not be all that fast but when you are dangling 10 stories above the ground and are moving, it feels pretty fast.
Now I am terrified of heights. I have been for a long time. So throwing myself off a tower that is on the edge of a large hill, giving my life to the integrity of a couple ropes, pullies and cables to get me across the valley is not comforting to me. But as with every other time I've done a zipline, the thrill once you've jumped off is really more than worth the terrifying preparation.
So, like the huggies pull-ups commercials, I am able to declare at the top of my lungs "I'm a big kid now!" because I overcame that pesky phobia of heights and actually took a risk for once (well twice actually).
I shall now attempt to return to writing my sermon in hopes that my ramblings here have aided in my mind getting rolling enough to get this thing done today (I don't have much choice I need to).

2 comments:

Shaolin said...

Trizzle, my NIzzle,
Glad to hear this zip-lizzle worked out better for you then the one at Dallizzle Vallizzle Ranchizzle, sorry about all the Izzle speak, but it's 12:52am, and thats what happens when i'm up this late and fresh from playing Basketball on my PS2

Shle said...

You are a creative genius who doesn't know how to spell genius..
I hope your sermon went well anyways.
Peace out gangsta

PS Gerald says Hi ;)