#and there's a lot still wrong with the RCC

[katya-1917]

I attended Catholic school from kindergarten to 12th grade.

The RCC is Still Like This.

Not "wizard shit" and not necessarily just the parish priests, but Local Church Authorities absolutely still do Shit The Bishop Shouldn't See.

If you've been a kid in a Catholic school who gets to see shit she shouldn't because she does a volunteer job like fixing the technology or assisting the lunch servers, and you've been helping with something in administration in the lead up to an announced visit by the bishop, you know what I mean.

Some of it qualifies as "liturgical abuse" and breaking canon law.

A lot of it is just... stuff that could also go wrong and cause trouble in a public school. Bad decisions made by administrators stretching shoestring budgets. Things like having the students "volunteer" for tasks that the school needs done, but faculty man hours spent on it cost money the facility doesn't have, so get the sixth graders, or the ninth graders, to do it. Things like hall monitoring, safety patrol on the sidewalks and crossings around the building, and simple repairs of damaged equipment to save the administration money replacing said equipment, and so on.

No one ever got in any trouble for any of that stuff in my 12 years. Often because there was way worse also going on, but that's special ed for ya, Catholics weren't any worse than any other special needs program - special ed isolation/concentration programs do have a tendency to encourage abuse and attract staff who aren't interested in teaching to enrich lives but rather just want access to often physically fragile children who are unable to complain or won't be taken seriously when they can and do complain. So, usually, high authorities are more concerned about abuse of isolation rooms and teachers who throw classroom objects at the students, than about canon law or a student acting as cheap onsite IT or a sixth grader being the only hall monitor for a whole floor during lunch.

But yeah, Catholic schools are basically... combine the worst parts of "local parishes doing weird shit", WH40K Administratum bureaucratic nonsense, and little kids as a Chaos Multiplier to any situation. They're absolute madhouses at the best of times. If you need a setting for any story involving child main characters that introduces a lot of chaos and careless/overworked adults, use a Catholic school. Those of us who attended one will laugh our asses off reading your story.

I understand why a lot of fantasy settings with Ambiguously Catholic organised religions go the old "the Church officially forbids magic while practising it in secret in order to monopolise its power" route, but it's almost a shame because the reality of the situation was much funnier.

Like, yes, a lot of Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages did practice magic in secret, but they weren't keeping it secret as some sort of sinister top-down conspiracy to deny magic to the Common People: they were mostly keeping it secret from their own superiors. It wasn't one of those "well, it's okay when we do it" deals: the Church very much did not want its local priests doing wizard shit. We have official records of local priests being disciplined for getting caught doing wizard shit. And the preponderance of evidence is that most of them would take their lumps, promise to stop doing wizard shit, then go right back to doing wizard shit.

It turns out that if you give a bunch of dudes education, literacy, and a lot of time on their hands, some non-zero percentage of them are going to decide to be wizards, no matter how hard you try to stop them from being wizards.

[cumbtafisgolf1982-blog]

I have a near photographic memory. But I only film what my focus is directed on. No peripheral. Does anyone have any experience using the Nars Radiant Creamy Concealer as eye primer? Whenever I tried, my eyeshadow transfers and creases like crazy. My eyes aren hooded, but a lot of my mobile eyelid space disappears into my crease when I open my eyes fully, if that makes sense. I understand that some transfer and creasing is inevitable, but when I use RCC as primer, it like whole patches of eyeshadow just lift up and disappear, sometimes taking the concealer with them.. He then bade me disguise myself, and we both slipped out of 의령출장샵 a garden door which opened on to the cemetery. It did not take long for us to arrive at the scene of the prince's disappearance, or to discover the tomb I had sought so vainly before. We entered it, and found the trap door which led to the staircase, but we had great difficulty in raising it, because the prince had fastened it down underneath with the plaster he had brought with him.. Wow this is really shitty and unhelpful. Look, it's 의령출장샵 always a risk to move in with a partner to escape an abusive home life, but generally that's because relationships are unstable in general and rushing the moving in process can have consequences. But if you're seriously considering taking that risk, then obviously things are very bad at home and you don't have a lot of great options. If in the case of Deborah, she finds that he is not going to marry her because he is already married, then she could have moved her intentions to financial gain, and asked him to give her some money to keep things spicy and interesting. Before you say that this is prostitution, and wrong, I will say that its better to be giving out for money than to do if for free. The end result is that at least you have something, and the whole situation will be more pleasant and less resentful.. I can still eat what I want as long as I work out 3 times a week and drink 64 ounces of water or more a day, just like I did 4 years ago!" WRONG!! One month of working out, I weighed and measured. Lo and behold, I gained a whole percentage of body fat and didn't lose one inch or drop one pound! I nearly lost it. It hit me like a ton of bricks. And it not like there some rule that you can go inside and sit on the internet all day. They kinda like dogs in that a lot of their exploration of the world is through smell and biting things. We all heard "As greedy as a pig," they always excited to see if something is food. The quality of the shadows are very old Morphe. The mattes are dry and need a lot of work but the shade Crown Jewels, a dusky pink/purple, is a lovely colour either as a transition or liner with a good brush. The brown and bone shades are lacking and are far more trouble than they are worth.. People killed by a bomb or shot by a gun often die instantly, but in ancient times, that was rarely the case. You would be standing in mud, created from ungodly amounts of blood on the ground, surrounded by corpses, limbs, and the screams and wails of dying soldiers. Above the screams, there the pounding of footsteps and horses. Well, I subscribe to the belief that while everyone has preferences when it comes to who they date/sleep with (and this doesn need to be even about race) it is odd that people always feel the need over share this kind of information; especially since it can lead to discomfort and hurt feelings. I think it would be best for people to be a little bit more careful when sharing too. On the other hand, I also agree that dismissing AM is most likely a result of media bias.

[apenitentialprayer]

Do you think the RCC will ever reconsider its stance on sexual ethics? I'm tired of the gay marriage/contraception/masturbation debate.

The short answer? No, sorry. If the Church is the one founded by Christ, and if the Church cannot be errant in terms of theological teachings, then these things aren’t going to do a one eighty. They might get further clarified down the line, but nothing that will contradict what they are currently teaching.Gonna keep going a bit longer, if you don’t mind, about the second part of your ask; in what way are you tired of the debates? If you’re tired of having to defend the Church’s stance, I can sympathize; its hard especially when you live in a society that is hostile to people and organizations who hold that stance. That’s not going to change, though; we’re going to have to learn to live with people who don’t hold our opinions without compromising what we believe. If I were to give a piece of advice, just remember that people are first and foremost people.I’m going to give a quick example from something that happened in my own life recently (something that I hope the other person, if they see this, doesn’t mind me sharing). Shortly after the Ireland referendum went through, someone sent me a message expressing their disappointment at the result. I tried to console them, and said that its important that the next day we go out without any bitterness and face those who supported the result with kindness. In a moment of passion, a very close friend of mine that had read that post unfollowed me and wrote about how they hoped that people like me “stayed bitter” in a post that essentially implied that the anon and I were anti-woman. Shortly thereafter, I spoke to them about something completely different (and, frankly, more important), and I made it a point to make sure that I didn’t talk about how I was hurt by what they did. They are, after all, more than just a walking personification of their pro-choice ideology, and I was hoping that we were close enough for them to remember that I was more than just a walking copy of the Church’s catechism. We still haven’t addressed what happened, but they have since started following me again. I haven’t seen them in person yet, but we’ll see what happens then, I guess.Are you tired of these debates because you find yourself disagreeing with these teachings of the Church? Again, I’ve been in your boat (and still have a foot in it, so to speak). Its difficult enough when you can’t assent to Church teachings on an intellectual level, but on the level of the heart too? As Catholics, we have to figure out how we can try to respond to these tensions within us. The simplest course of action, of course, is to apostatize; but if you genuinely believe that Christ was God, and that Christ established the Catholic Church, that isn’t really an option. So now we’re stuck trying to figure out what we’re going to do from there.Remember that, even if you are not currently in communion with the Church, you are nonetheless still a Catholic. A year or two ago I was furious when someone particularly well known in the Tumblr Catholic community implied this wasn’t the case. They were wrong. Catholics currently outside of communion with the Church are still Catholics, and they had no right to erase the relationship these people had with Jesus, no matter how strained these relationships might have been.I was one of these Catholics for a long time. It was a relief to remind myself that while at the end of time our relationship with God is all or nothing, that does not have to be the case now. We’re all, to varying degrees, Nicodemuses who are perplexed and incredulous, sometimes intentionally so. We’re going to have to make the choice of whether we ultimately stand with Christ or against Him, but in the meantime we can slowly build our relationship.There was a time where I did not feel as if I could recite the Act of Faith, which contains the line “"I believe […] all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches.“ At the time, I couldn’t assent to them intellectually, let alone emotionally. So, what did I do? I didn’t recite this prayer. I found other prayers that I knew I could honestly recite, and focused on them instead. I built my relationship with God in ways that I could do at that moment, and put my trust in Him that way. So if you feel that there are barriers in your relationship with Him right now, even to the extent that you cannot at this time take Communion, do not worry. You are loved, and you can still love.This requires a lot of openness on your end; it can be frustrating. When you’re angry with the Church, remember that there may be times where Jesus’s presence inside Her will be the only reason you can stand Her, and that’s okay. When you’re angry at Jesus, remember that the Truth can be hard to deal with at times, and that is okay too. The most important thing that you can do is keep the conversation going. Keep praying in ways that you can honestly do. Keep researching the reasons that the Church teaches what She does, and really take the time to scrutinize those reasons and take them apart. An honest striving for Truth is never wrong.Today I still cannot say that my heart of hearts is 100% in alignment with the teachings of the Church, but I can at least intellectually submit myself to them. In the future, I hope I can do more than that. Nicodemus is a saint now. We can be too.

[peterandviola]

My Unlikely 5th Birthday

Some awful things have happened on this date in history. Of course, we all knew about the attack on the World Trade Center by commandeered passenger jets.  It was a herald of the driving enemy of global anxiety. It is fear itself.

Of course, other notable events happened. For me, a very personal event occurred that changed my life forever: The sudden and painful implosion of my left femur, following a biopsy at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. It was September 11, 2013.

What I can remember about my personal 9/11 is fuzzy, disconnected and colored by strangeness and trauma. I was pretty sure I was dying, especially when the morphine IV in the ambulance made no difference in the pain.

As we flew up Highway 12, I wondered what was wrong. Words like myeloma and bone cancer had been thrown around in the days preceding the biopsy. One surgeon thought all I needed was a routine hip replacement, which made me feel like I was exaggerating. One thing was known. There was a four inch lytic lesion (hole) in the bone. I was assured that was a really bad thing.

The first 24 hours of a trauma are decisive; I know that I threw up a lot, which is not unusual for such an event, especially when paired with morphine. I know I hallucinated, and I know I cussed like a bad parrot with every breath. Friends appeared and disappeared as I raved on. Peter, my husband, was almost as traumatized as I was. Marianna and Mike Terhune kept vigil, along with Georgeann  Muntin, all with calming intentions, but I could not be calmed.

I could not keep a roommate. They would change rooms with apologies. Finally, I was moved down a hallway where no nurses seem to come. I was agonized, confused and upset. After a while, the massive amounts of morphine collected in my blood, and I went into a stupor. A nurse with an eye for disaster took one look and called a Code Blue. Apparently, there was a charge of ER doctors and nurses who came to revive me, hustling with equipment and NorCon to drip into my IV. I suddenly opened my eyes and saw Peter. “Honey. Where have you been,” I murmured sweetly.

There are countless more instances in my catastrophic diagnosis, but I will spare you. Let’s just say there were many complications over a period of days when the trauma doc, Fred Bennett finally decided to operate against the will of the “hospitalist” who thought the pneumonia I had developed might kill me. Peter asked for his reasoning, and Bennett, ever the silent type, said simply, “If we don’t operate, she will die of pain.”

My feelings about this chaos and the kingdom of pain I had inhabited are still a bit confused, but perfect clarity is no longer important to me. I do know I could not accept the final verdict of Renal Cell Cancer. I truly believed I had been in a devastating car wreck. I would ask nurses and doctors if anyone had died in the wreck, or if any children had been injured. It was like Groundhog Day, over and over again. Finally, my oncologist, the ever-sweet and patient Ian Anderson explained it to me and told me he was my oncologist and would see me through this terrible thing.

That day, I went into the MRI tube to scan my brain. I was terrified of being so confined, so I was given more opioids.  An hour later, Dr. Anderson came in with a beautiful smile. “Finally,” he assured me, “we have some good news. Your brain is clean.” He held my hand while I digested that. Finally, I said, “Does that mean I’ll garden again?” He told me later that a thousand things went through his mind—RCC patients who died after a month, the potential therapies ahead that might kill or maim me, the onslaught of radiation, the imperative nephrectomy that would collect my 5 ½ lb. left kidney—but it just didn’t matter.  He leaned over and whispered in my year, “Yes.” 

At that very moment, “yes” became my personal password. No matter what medical insult was thrown at me, I would just say “yes”—yes, I would live, yes, I would write again, yes, I was still me.

The last five years haven’t been easy, but what a flair for understatement I have developed. Two titanium rods have failed, along with a steel plate.

And the loss of my kidney. So what? I’m here to celebrate my five years on the planet, after doctors gave me a few months at best. I’ve spent months in nursing homes and rehab hospitals, learning how to walk again, how to live a life, despite all sorts of unsuspected disturbances and distress. Many of you visited me and soothed me. Thank you all for that. Thank you to my faithful physical therapists, especially Debi, Terri, Rob and Julie. One foot in front of another, I learned. Follow instructions and do your exercises. All these people and things have brought me here to my current domain, where “help” is a good, kind word and nothing to eschew.

Easy, oh no, but good, yes and yes.  Am I my old self? Good grief no. I walk with a limp, I am woozy as I thump along and I have tiny tattoos that mark my radiation sites. But, I’ve fallen in love again with my precious Peter, my husband of two decades and change. Not only has he been my champion, but my  confidante, my caregiver, my handsome man with the heroic blue eyes.

The future blinks on the horizon. It could be hard, it could be good, it could be both. Am I afraid? No, I am not. Have I exceeded my expectations and goals? Oh yes. I find each day, despite the unlikeliness of me. I am here, and as Dr. Anderson once whispered in my ear, “yes.”

[littlestickfish]

Pope Francis removed him for being ridiculously and virulently hateful toward the LGBT and other minority communities, going so far as to say they don't belong in the Church--the Church Pope Francis is currently endeavoring to make safer and more welcoming to these folks.

The misleading part has nothing to do with whether or not it's legal by secular standards. The misleading part is the implication that this was some sort of arbitrary and unreasonable move instead of a rogue bishop who preached hate facing consequences for his actions.

The man was a menace, and this level of disciplinary action is the least he deserves.

im fucking sobbing why did they kill him twice in a row in the community notes

[clemensenhu9-blog]

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[alivurun]

Life with Stage II Kidney Cancer Sub-Type Chromophobe

I had been having bouts of extreme pain in my right side on and off for over a year. Sometimes the pain would be so bad that I would literally fall to the floor. Other times, when in class, I would have to slide way down in the seat and stretch my legs out straight, praying it would just subside enough for me to get down the notes I needed. I was 47, had already been diagnosed as having fibromyalgia, and kept thinking it was one of the 50 different ways that condition tries to interfere with living. As a disabled vet, I only had to cross campus to see my primary healthcare provider at the local VA hospital. Again and again I went over to the Women's Clinic, reporting the pain that would come and go. Eventually, I was seen in the GYN Clinic and a uterine fibroid was diagnosed. During Thanksgiving break, I went in for what was to be ambulatory surgery, in and out the same day, and spent a week recovering from having my abdomen cut open to find the bleeder that almost took my life. At least the fibroid was gone, and with it one ovary that had been so laden with cysts they hung off it like Christmas tree ornaments. Slowly, I recovered. I'd had lots of cysts removed over the years (inside and on the surface of my body), and even had to have a radical subcutaneous mastectomy because of a severe fibrocystic condition in my breasts years earlier. I just figured this was another such case. Unfortunately, the pain in my side continued coming back. I kept going over to the VA hospital, and had more than one doctor tell me that while they could understand my concern, my mother having died of ovarian cancer, they couldn't find anything wrong. Eventually meeting my goal of graduating with my B.A. before the end of the century (it only took me 30 years to get the thing!), I started looking for work, and tried not to dwell on this stupid pain. It didn't last long, it didn't bother me often, it just really bothered me a lot when it hit. "I could live with it," seemed to be what the doctors thought, and I guess I finally got worn down to thinking the same way. Five months passed. At last I got a job on campus in my major, and excitedly looked forward to starting this new phase of my life. The week before I was to start working, my best friend flew out from California to Florida, and took me on a 4-day jaunt down to the Keys. We had such a relaxing time. On our way back to Tampa, stopped at a gas station in Naples, I went in to use the Ladies, and my urine was the color of red wine. I'd had a few bladder infections, and this wasn't like they had been. I started the pills prescribed for a bladder infection, but wasn't feeling so good. I had none of the symptoms I'd come to associate with that condition: no pressure to urinate, no burning when urinating, no feeling of fullness in my abdomen. Instead, I felt more and more rundown, which didn't jive with the excitement I felt at work. Again, I thought maybe this was the fibromyalgia acting on the increased stress of having a job. I was learning that fibromyalgia flare-ups often are indicators of there being something wrong nearby. But I had been anemic before, and when the clinic called to say my urine test had come back negative for an infection, something pushed me to say I thought I was anemic, and needed more tests. Thank God for listening to that voice. The next day I went in for tests that took up most of the day: lab work, a CT scan, an abdominal X-ray. The X-ray was last, and I noticed several people gathered around the film that was shortly taken down as I was told to report back to the clinic. My primary healthcare provider had been taking care of me for 3 1/2 years by then, and had seen me through many things, including a ruptured Achilles tendon. The staff in the clinic had my unflagging loyalty. Other doctors in other clinics had sometimes given me attitude when they couldn't find any medical cause of my complaints, but the women in the clinic had always listened and tried to get me taken care of. I don't think I could have gotten through the university without their care and support, so when Jane reached out to hold my hand before speaking, I knew the news wasn't good. I had already lost all my family, had been unable to have children because of being raped and injured as a child, and now I was in jeopardy of losing myself. I just knew it. I tried to backpedal from imminent disaster by saying, "Okay, so this has just been much ado about nothing, right?" All the time knowing that my life was about to change. "I am so sorry, Dawn," Jane said. "You have gone through so much already, and you really don't need this. You were right, you are anemic. The reason you are is because of a tumor on your right kidney, and the doctors I've talked to have said that about 90% of these tumors are cancerous. You are going to have to have your kidney removed." I sat there, feeling the skin on my body contract and start crawling, as though it wanted nothing more than to escape what was to come. I already called myself Frankenstein's Bride, and now I was going to have even more reason to wonder why any guy would ever want to hold me close, if I even lived long enough to find someone to care for. Jane showed me the picture from the X-ray where it looked as though my kidney was a baseball glove holding a ball. The tumor was the size of a large navel orange, and I couldn't wait to get it out of me. The next week I met with the surgeon. He had taught at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School for 7 years, and reassured me he would be able to take this away. Good, I thought, cause I sure don't want it in me any longer than it has to be. Unfortunately, the surgery schedule was packed, and it would be a 6-week wait. My roommate was a leukemia survivor and a close friend, and it surprised me that oftentimes she seemed even more frightened of this disease than I was. I didn't realize then how this had her revisiting her own trial. Before hearing that I may have kidney cancer, I didn't even know there was such a thing. I needed to know more, and with six weeks to wait had plenty of time to find out all I could. I didn't do as much work as I could have those weeks of waiting, but I did find Steve Dunn's CancerGuide, and that led me to the KIDNEY-ONC list, and there I found facts and hope. Any question my fear bubbled up in my brain, someone would have an answer for. I began to think that things would just possibly work out okay. This disease was a beast, but eventually, I would learn how to dance with it. Plenty of caregivers and others with RCC told me so. When I woke up from the nephrectomy, I honestly thought someone had tried to cut me in two, and hadn't quite finished the job. I lay still for two days before I could get out of bed. In time, I got my surgical report and found out that I had lost not one, but two ribs. The bulge in my side would not go away with time and healing. I now had a curve in on one side, and a curve out on the other. My feminine vanity winced every time I looked in the mirror, but I was alive. I still had a pain in my side from the strong suturing needed to close the vena cava and aorta that had led into and out of my kidney. In time that pain faded. My surgeon told me at 6-months I could consider myself cured, and having stayed with the list, I knew enough by then to know that was simply not true. I could never consider myself cured, even if the RCC never metastasized. For the rest of my life, I would need to have tests, checking. I wrote a five-paragraph concise letter to the man, telling what I had learned, what I needed, and disputing his claim of a cure. I began the 6-month cycle of tests which would continue for the next two years, and I have never had to meet with that particular doctor again. One day a year and a half after my neph, I got a call at work from my VA caseworker over at the Federal building in St. Petersburg. An intern had been going through records, making sure everything was as it should be with them, and had noticed a discrepancy. Although I'd been rated at 60% disabled from the time of my discharge from the Navy eight years earlier, I had been paying a portion of my monthly disability back every month to what had been called severance pay when discharged, but was in fact an advance on future disability pay. Only those above 50% don't pay it back. In two days, $19,000 was being deposited into my checking account. I could get a car, I could pay off bills, I could go to Disney World! At Christmas time, my roommate and I were finally feeling we could celebrate the holidays. She'd never been to Disney World, and we spent 3-nights at one of the Disney resorts, and had a wonderful time. This was only a few months after the tragedy of 9/11, and it seemed as though we had all of the parks to ourselves. What a treat! I sent a postcard of Mickey with the American flag to the White House, telling the president we had heard his message of how important it was for us citizens to go about our lives. He was right about that. Two and a half months later, as I was spending a few weeks with my best friend, Valerie, in California with and her two kids, my godchildren, I got a call. My roommate had gotten off the bus on her way home from work, and had been struck and killed crossing the road. Again, my life was changing. How glad I was in the days and weeks to come that we had spent that time together in Orlando. I went home, and began the process of living completely alone. I did pretty well during the time it took to close up the life of my friend. I packed up and sent off the things she'd wanted her daughter and grandkids to have. I contacted the Junior League of Women, Goodwill, and friends to give her things to those who could make use of them. I wrote her eulogy and held a memorial service. And then, I fell apart. For the next year, I went to work and then got back into bed, not getting out until it was time to go back to work. I cried all the time. I couldn't stand going anywhere we'd been together, although I would try, but end up leaving in tears. Finally, I began taking RCIA (the Rite of Catholic Initiation for Adults) classes at the local Catholic Church. I started to live again, make new friends, and emerge from the shroud of grief that had been suffocating me. I joined the choir and became a cantor. I got a new job with an increase in pay. I rejoined the race. I reached three years with No Evidence of Disease (NED), and finally was able to ask to see the results of the tests and break away from figuring if it was bad news they'd let me know. I learned I had numerous cysts in my liver, but was told when I asked, that is not uncommon. I've kept reading, and recently found out that for the sub-type of RCC I have, chromophobe, the liver is more likely to be the site it metastasizes to than with clear cell. I have my annual physical in a week, and will be bringing this information to my new primary healthcare giver. I will once again stand firm and ask that additional tests are added to those done once a year, checking to see that my liver is functioning well and true. Like most of us diagnosed with this disease, I've asked "why me?" Maybe it was some genetic precursor; maybe it was being 50-80 pounds overweight for a few years; maybe it was all of the petrochemicals I handled as a jet mechanic in the Navy, all of which had warnings printed on the top of the containers that exposure to the skin could cause organ damage. Who knows? As of yet, no one. Eventually, I quit worrying about why, and began to focus on fighting back. Whatever I have to do to keep the beast in check, I will do. It can't be trusted, and I know that. This life belongs to me, and no one or nothing is going to take it away from me without a fight. I still haven't found anyone to hold me close, but that doesn't mean I don't have people to care for or who care for me. Life is good. I have made friends I've never met on the KIDNEY-ONC list, but one day I'll get to a convention with KCA and will meet them, face to face, heart to heart, and give away hugs that will mean more to me than I have words to express.

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Preaching Pressures

It’s Sunday morning in the Students Building at the Richfield Community Church. Our worship band is finishing their set, as I take one more glance at my sermon notes I’ve been prepping all week. 

I know the passage well, but will I be able to present it in a way that connects at all with these students? Did I spend enough time on this? Did I pray enough? Did I focus on the right themes? Are my illustrations going to land? Is my PowerPoint going to be helpful or distracting? Am I going to say “um” too many times again? Is this darn ear-piece microphone actually going to stay in my ear?  

The song is over, time to take the stage. “God, please speak through me!”

A Instagram post from my student ministry featuring a quotation from one of my messages. Crazy!

My first semester here at RCC is almost in the books, and now I find myself reflecting on one of the biggest parts of my internship, preaching. 

Like a lot of ministry, preaching has turned out to be hugely challenging and rewarding for me thus far. Here’s a couple points on either side... 

Preaching is the best!

Preaching gets you into the Bible like nothing else. The connection you feel with passages that you preach is so deep, namely because preaching forces you to dig into the context of a passage and into the practical application of it. Of course these are things you might normally do when reading the Bible, but the fact that you’re preparing a message for students that you love brings a whole new level of determination to deeply understand the text.

Preaching is an incredible privilege. I’ve had so many moments this semester where I’ve stopped and realized how crazy it is that I am literally shaping my students’ view of God. Each concept that I unpack on stage is contributing to how they view their Creator. If what theologian A.W Tozer says is true, that “what we think when we think of God is the most important thing about us,” then think about how huge of a responsibility it is to faithfully unpack the Bible as I preach. So thankful for such an opportunity.

Preaching is a beast!

Preaching takes a LOT of preparation. Oh my word is this true! Perhaps it’s because I’m still a beginner in a lot of ways, but I find myself spending 8-10 hours preparing for each message I give, and sometimes more! I have such a hard time deciding what I want to say, how I want to say it, and whether or not I’m accurately interpreting passages. I’m constantly second guessing my decisions, and regularly find myself scrapping everything and starting over. 

Preaching is vulnerable. What do I mean by this? Well, I mean that to get up on a stage in front of a crowd of students and leaders and bear your heart for the Lord requires a lot of vulnerability. The fear of how people will judge you is real. The fear that you’re getting things wrong is real. Or at least, this fears are real for me! Learning to not let these kinds of fears hold me back in preaching has been a central struggle for me. 

So as you can see, preaching is one beautiful beast of a privilege for those of us pursuing ministry. All in all, I’m thankful for how it’s shaping and sharpening me though, and I’m determined to keep growing this gift with each message I give!