Weeks ago, I got a rare chance to deliver a message for our Church’s  Sunday Livestream, and boy, the temptations! Didn’t my motivations get twisted, ‘exposed’ is the right word!

To be honest, I have never been too impressed with my preaching, (which I am told is a good thing for aspiring preachers) so after a friend encouraged me shortly after “not to take it as a race,” I listened.

Because I could relate. I mean, I had just participated in a heartbeat race, well, kind of.

First,  I wasn’t sure whether looking away from the camera to my notes was the right thing to do, I obsessed a little about my voice projection too.

Everything looked organized in my notes, but speaking it to the screen, it came out jumbled.

I knew as good expositional preaching requires, that I had to connect to the author’s intent,  but I remember recalling that way later, after the recording.

Most importantly, and probably most dangerously, I mixed up those notes, stating my last point first (bottom-up instead of bottom-down) plus citing things I didn’t plan to in-between.

I recorded the sign off twice (was it the introduction?) because somehow, well, I forgot.

And oh, I won’t forget the camera guy’s gestures, I was lucky I had opened up the book of Mark I  preached from, otherwise, we may as well have ended up in Lamentations.

In my small experience,  no matter your preparation in prayer or otherwise, pressing the record button has a way of exposing a Preacher’s worst flaws and now I see it’s for a reason, so maybe you can say with Paul,

“…I boast in my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest in me,” (2 Cor 12:9) Or perhaps to confirm that only the gospel, not ” a superior word” (1 Cor 1:21) saves. Or to put it in James Denney’s words “No man can give at once the impressions that he himself is clever and that Jesus Christ is mighty to save.”

In these Livestream days, as long as we are fallen humans, so many things will go wrong, (this is no excuse for inept preparation) but my prayer is that preachers who prepare adequately will still wholly lean on Christ for clean hearts even before the red button starts to blink.

It’s my prayer that, even online,  we will communicate what the biblical authors intended first, contextually, historically, grammatically and faithfully, rather than obsess over frozen screens, distracting personal examples, and neat backgrounds, however important those may be.