It's been an up and down week in the life of Nagahama church.
Last Sunday I broke down at the pulpit while preaching on Amos. I was not expecting to do that, particularly since I'd already given the sermon once before in English and once before in Japanese without incident. Which just goes to show, even if you're preaching to yourself, eventually you'll start to listen.
And then I had the privilege of conducting the dedication of the daughter of a couple from English service:
Surely one of the best perks of the job.
But then on Friday we had the funeral of a still-born baby. Yeah. Not much else you can say about that.
Today was fantastic. Lots of stuff just fell into place. We had an Argentinian pro soccer player, Ignatio Medina, come to give a testimony and talk about a sports outreach thing he's doing in Osaka, a soccer school attached to one of the churches there. He gave quite a long but very encouraging talk, not just about himself and his work but also encouraging people to use their gifts and their abilities for God's glory.
After the testimony I remembered the words of Bob Moffett about a particularly moving worship time we had in college: "Please don't spoil it with a sermon." And Takahashi-sensei, to his eternal credit, didn't. There was plenty of value in what Ignatio said for one service.
Ignatio gave a quick soccer workshop in the afternoon, to the delight of Japanese and Latin American kids alike, and then popped down to our local sports stadium to talk his way into hiring it for a decent price over Golden Week so he could run a soccer school here in Nagahama too. Result.
I, meanwhile, got talking to a bunch of professors from the Buddhist University of Osaka, who were in Nagahama to do research on multiculturalism and ethnic diversity - because of all the Latin stuff we do they contacted the church to come and interview people. One of them came along to the English service.
Now, I didn't know he'd be there, and in fact I hadn't really taken in that they'd be in church at all, because otherwise I'd have made a bigger thing about it. But in my sermon I talked about how God had promised to bring together a country from the lame and exiles of all nations, (Micah 4:7) which my new Buddhist friend obviously found very interesting.
I also shared some personal stuff about forgiveness which opened the hearts of a few people, some of whom had been coming to church for a long time but hadn't particularly opened up about their own lives. And Mr Takizawa, who's been coming to English service for a couple of months now, got to meet a pro soccer player, so that was all good.
Now this week it's back to the grindstone after a fairly free few weeks, with a missionary meeting tomorrow, a pastors' meeting Tuesday, a housegroup on Wednesday, and preaching twice on Sunday. But hey, today was worth it all.
PS, check out my luridly coloured photos of Nagahama. They are really photos, I promise you.
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