Back when I was in seminary and working as a youth pastor at my home church in Shelbyville, Indiana, I sometimes got the opportunity to preach before the whole congregation.<\/p>\n\n\n
Especially during the summer, when the senior pastor wanted some vacation time.<\/p>\n\n\n
Also during the summer our church would host a particular youth group from somewhere up north as they traveled south for their annual mission trip. They would crash on the youth group floor in their sleeping bags on a Saturday night, attend worship the next morning, and then be on their way.<\/p>\n\n\n
One particular summer weekend, my preaching and their visit coincided, so I was one of the first to greet them early Sunday morning. I said, “Our pastor is out of town for vacation, so you get to hear me <\/i>preach instead.”<\/p>\n\n\n
One of the teens spoke up: “That’s funny. The same thing happened last summer when we were passing through. I remember your sermon.”<\/p>\n\n\n
Really? My preaching struck a chord with this young man? And the lesson stayed with him throughout an entire year? I could only imagine how my words had impacted his spiritual walk.<\/p>\n\n\n
An unexpected burst of pride expanded my chest an inch or two.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
With great humility, I fished for more details: “Oh yeah? What do you remember?”<\/p>\n\n\n
And that is when this kid replied – with that special candor possessed by teenagers –\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“I remember you were sweating. A\u00a0lot<\/i>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back when I was in seminary and working as a youth pastor at my home church in Shelbyville, Indiana, I sometimes got the opportunity to preach before the whole congregation. Especially during the summer, when the senior pastor wanted some vacation time. Also during the summer our church would host a particular youth group from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8503,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502\/revisions\/8503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}