Who’s Preaching?

Today there was a funeral and a send-off (a send-off is something like a wedding). Before I left the office last night Pastor Mmanga said “will you preach at the send-off tomorrow?” I said “no.” So he said “will you preach at the funeral?” Again, I said “no.”

I was not trying to be lazy or stubborn, but I did preach at the funeral on Monday and I’m preaching on Sunday. Also, there are two other capable pastors and if they want to wait until the last minute to assign preaching duties, then they can preach themselves. (Okay, so maybe I was being a little bit stubborn.)

I know it’s probably a little bit excessive that at Southwood we usually know who is preaching a year in advance of any given Sunday morning and at least 6 months in advance of a wedding. Funerals are a little less predictable, but we certainly get more than 24 hours’ notice.

So when I got to the office this morning I asked Pastor Shao if he was going to be preaching at the funeral at 1 p.m. He said no, Pastor Mlay would be preaching (Pastor Mlay is a former Uswaa pastor who was to be visiting for today’s funeral.) Pastor Shao did confirm that he would be preaching at the send-off. So all seemed to be ready and I set about preparing my sermon for Sunday.

At about 12:15 another pastor showed up, Pastor Aaron. Then about 12:45 Pastor Mlay showed up. We were sitting in the pastor’s office at about 12:55 and Pastor Mlay was just sitting there relaxed and Pastor Aaron was thumbing through his Bible clearly thinking deeply about something. So I said to Pastor Aaron “are you preaching?” His response was “no.” So I said to Pastor Mlay “are you preaching?” He said “no, Pastor Shao is preaching.” At just that moment Pastor Shao walked into the room and had a very surprised look on his face.

Pastor Shao said to Pastor Mlay, “Pastor Mmanga said you were preaching.”

Pastor Mlay said to Pastor Shao, “Pastor Mmanga sent me an SMS that said he would let me know if I would be preaching and I never got a yes message.”

Pastor Shao then got out his cell phone to show Pastor Mlay the text message he had gotten from Pastor Mmanga that said “Pastor Mlay will be preaching.”

So now it’s about 1:02 p.m. and no one is prepared to preach. All 4 of us have on that “don’t look at me” face.

In the end, all is fine. Pastor Mlay ends up preaching. He preaches a rockin’ sermon. It was actually sort of awesome.