I found this to be a fairly challenging sermon to put together. One of those times when I felt strong about it in the preparation stage but then felt that it didn't quite work in the execution like I had hoped. That's one of the risks with extemporaneous preaching, you can feel very confident and good about your plan and what you want to say, but extemporaneous preaching isn't about merely "delivering" pearls of wisdom that are the freeze-dried product of a previously dead-and-gone process. No matter what process has gone before, there is a new stage of process that happens as the sermon is being unfurled in front of the congregation, and that can be very difficult to predict, even for someone with five+ years experience doing it! But, of course, with risk comes the possibilities of great reward, and many of my best sermons at Church of The Messiah were simply unimaginable to me before I started giving them.
Anyway, one of the main themes I wanted to deal with in this sermon was the general distaste people have for "organized" religion. We live in an age where it is fashionable to be cynical of institutions. I probe that a bit in this sermon. Cheers.
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