The Reviews Are In...

I am halfway through my internship now. And that means mid-year evals. This internship, like any other job, means that there are evaluations to fill out. My supervisor, my internship committee, and I all filled out forms evaluating how I am doing as an intern. And the reviews weren't bad. In fact, they were pretty good. There were three ratings that I could be given, not competent, competent, and exceptional (and there is quite a ridiculous jump from competent to exceptional). My internship committee even surprised me with a couple of exceptional ratings (neither my supervisor nor I felt comfortable rating me as exceptional although we made note that I was above exceptional in several categories).

And you can't help but feel a bit good about yourself after a decent review goes in. It's like getting straight A's on your report card. It bolsters the ego a bit. However, it's important to keep humility on the radar too. Yesterday, I had to preach for our Wednesday Lent service. It's a smaller service and less pressure than our three services on Sunday. However, this doesn't mean that I can slack for this service either. And this week it finally happened. I had serious issues writing this sermon and I'm not really sure why. And I'm not going to chalk it up to a lack of piety either because I definitely did my fair share of praying throughout the entire process. Though I finally did figure something out, I wasn't necessarily happy with it. Or at least it wasn't as good as I thought it should or could be. And I'm a person who likes to do well, who usually excels and fits nicely into the archetypal overachiever category. But I wasn't given a choice. There were no extensions for this. I had to go up and give, in my opinion, my less than great sermon.

It went okay and I simply prayed the entire time for God to go his thing because it was all up to him once I started speaking. Afterwards I was talking with another pastor who didn't get to hear me preach and was talking about how I had difficulty with this one. He reminded me that not every sermon is going to be perfect and go exactly how we want it. I was experiencing something that everyone who preached has felt at some point in time. And I found myself being reminded of the very grace that I preach about every time I get up in front of the congregation in a very real way. Though I'm always going to strive to do my best because the congregation deserves that, but I'm also human and that means every sermon won't necessarily be a out-of-the-park sermon and that's okay. In this job I don't stand on works even though I always try to do what's best. When it comes down to it, if I'm to get anywhere, I need to remember that I stand on grace.