Why I don't preach.

Preaching implies authority, and I have none. I cannot honestly say I even have a very full grasp on who should have authority and why, especially in our day and age, where anyone can start a church, and an ordination (if needed at all) can be done quickly online.

Simply because I do not claim authority does not mean that I do not have anything to say. I also admit that no one has an obligation (nor even necessarily owes me a courtesy) to listen.

So why then say anything? For the same reason why anyone else does, I suppose: because I have a thought, I have a feeling, I have a story, and because no one else is quite saying things in the same way that I would.

And what value does anything that I say bring? Well, that largely depends on what I'm saying at the time and what the reader attributes to it. I cannot claim to understand the mind of others, as I sometimes hardly comprehend my own thoughts that are inside my own head. Lord have mercy on those who try to understand from the outside.

I have often wondered what I might say if I was asked to teach in church on a Sunday morning. There is a part of me that thinks I am well equipped and that I could certainly offer a different perspective than the regular teachers, but there's another part of me that wonders if a Sunday morning church teaching is the time and place at all for something “different”. Perhaps what people need more is consistency and repetition. Liturgies exist for a reason, and even in our unliturgical age, the mere repetition of themes and ideas might form their own sort of liturgy. To say nothing of the music, which all sounds so much the same that it might as well be the same. A liturgy of uniformity.