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Jonah Ch 1: Jonah goes down to Sea Monster City

I really love the Book of Jonah because the prophet Jonah sucks so bad. I managed not to say "sucks" from the pulpit because it's tacky, but that's what I was thinking. Also, I didn't say "bigass fish" or "bigass storm" but I really like that as a translation for גדול (gadol) and would probably have turned it in for a class because hyperbole is a a mark of satire.

Sermon actually starts at 0:24; I need to figure out how to trim audio.

The first thirteen (13!!) minutes explore what it means for the Book of Jonah to be satire, "I am more worried about taking scripture seriously than literally." The next 14ish minutes (re)tell the biblical story in light of that satire.

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My official pastoral responsibility to my congregation is part-time. It's awesome. Super great for my mental health. This set up means I preach 1st and 3rd Sundays and other people from my congregation and guests fill in the other Sundays. It's a lotta fun and my people get to hear lots of different views and preaching styles.

Because September has 5 Sundays this year it falls that I get to preach Jonah chapters 1 and 4 as bookends while my people do chapters 2 and 3.

I am working on moving away from manuscript preaching because I am just more alive, engaging, and natural from notes. (It freaks me out tho.)

Check out this method, lol. I often get my ideas out on sticky notes and then move them around for logical flow and cull what doesn't need to be there. Then I usually 1. hand copy an outline into my nice looking black faux-leather preaching journal or 2. type up some notes.

Multiple Bibles because I am v holy

But, nope, this time I just sticky-noted those suckers straight into a spiral notebook, because I am extremely classy.
extremely classy

Unfortunately, that means I don't have manuscripts to share--just poor quality audio that I take mostly to listen to myself, so I can continue to grow. (Is my tic of slight repetition while I'm thinking a distraction, or does it help the hearer follow along? Feedback welcome.)

This is the bulletin art I reference in my sermon; I'm going to link here to credit the artist, BUT CW// he uses a racial slur in describing Ninevites, which I did not notice initially.

In retrospect, maybe I should have just used the unicode?



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