How do you measure success? By emotion or by results? On an emotional level I have to confess I was a little disappointed about yesterday. I preached with outward passion but inward calm. The potential 'heart in the throat' moment when people stood to pray at the end of the sermon (see yesterday's post) left me unmoved (perhaps because I had my eyes shut!) After the service there was conversation about the sermon ('making disciples') which is a big improvement on most weeks, but I didn't get that sense of a real 'buzz' amongst people. In the evening a dozen turned up for a service of 'prayer, music and contemplation'. It was good to pray together but again I didn't feel any surge of excitement at what we were doing.
So I come back to my question. How do you measure success? If the point was to make me feel good or excited about the services then both services failed. I was at no point overcome by powerful waves of emotion. On the other hand if the point was to encourage others, to persuade them to take seriously the church's role in making disciples, to motivate them to pray, to get them on board with doing new things, then so far the results are encouraging (not dramatic, just encouraging). Of course, time will tell. One day's stirring up is not enough. Long term action is needed. In the meantime, there's no point in me feeling morose because I didn't scale any emotional heights myself. Yesterday was a good day. The Spirit was at work. My next job is to build on these foundations and not let them crumble away.
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