Monday, December 21, 2009

Riding the wooden hobby-horse

This week will, thankfully, be very quiet. Aside from church services on Christmas Eve and Day and a couple of family bashes, I've got an empty calendar.

So... I've been catching up on the blogs that a would normally trawl through in any given fortnight. Using alltop, I'm usually exposed to around 150+ blogs.

Today i stumbled over this post, about preaching at a lectern or not, and it got me thinking.

Or... it reminded me of the preaching styles that happened when we had a combined church service years ago. I was absolutely wowed when one guy, who was also really good, preached without a lectern, whilst one used a regular pulpit and the other a music stand.

I wrestled with this topic when i started preaching regularly and was pretty comfortable with the whole process.

After a while, i tried unshackling myself from the pulpit. And i found that it worked well.

I was more free to use body movement during stores and illustrations, use steps to the side and forward/backward to connect with my points and seemed to be more transparent.

Now, I've not chopped the pulpit into kindling. I still use one when i preach to older folks (or any audience where it will be the expectation) and have a stand of some description beside me for my notes, but i prefer not using one if the space allows.

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