A Sutch sermon evaluation

Another reminder that if you’re not Sutch, you’re not much…zeig Heil byotches.

Pastor, 

(Proforma expression to Butter up, flatter, butter up, flatter, butter up, flatter butter flatter butter butter…followed by condescending employment of buzz words denoting fondnesss and feigned appreciation, then – diminutive and unwelcome use of First Name),

Weneed to bring up a concern we have for you.   (‘concern‘and ‘for you‘ are mandatory…)

Now, we know we have not had any training in this, and that we have never gone to school or had any experience actually doing this, but (First name), you need to preach differently.  You really ought to listen to us, (First name) because we’ve done this as a group for 145 years – sure, we’ve done it wrongly for 145 years, not individually, but together, as an aggregate…synergism! But the point is… uh, what were we saying again?  …Oh yeah, we’ve done it, well, not really DONE it, well, we’ve more been on the session going to meetings really, that is, unless we go camping or see the grandkids or work overtime or – well ok, we really haven’t done it much really – you know, the meeting with people in person thing –  not actually so much, and really listening to people thing – not that either, we guess… OK, so maybe not DOING it, really, but… uh, going to the meetings… yeah, we do definitely go to the meetings – for 145 years…that’s a long time – 145! and that makes us qualified to be your boss,(First name).  That we don’t know what we’re doing – totally NOT the issue.  So, (First name), stop bringing up our lack of training and lack of teachability – our comptence isn’t the issue here, it’s yours, well, the sermon length thing anyway, that’s what we’re talking about here.  Listen to us!!!

Mainly, (First name), you need to preach shorter and stop using so many words and concepts we don’t understand, because, see, we don’t read the Bible to understand it, we read it to be seen reading it. 

Now it’s not the sermon content, (you use a lot of fun words like ‘confession’ and ‘covenant’ and ‘sovereignty’ and ‘reformed’ and ‘Calvin’, (and we like that) — it’s the other stuff; the stuff about us, mostly, and then there’s the length, did we mention the length?

(First name), we just want to help you be better (OK, sure, we’re supposed to say that…) and we’re just trying to help you here, (First name): all you have to do is just take out some of the words – we don’t know exactly which words you should take out, but we all agree that you just use too many of them. 

See, we’re really committed to our huge indulgent  meal and our slothish naps on the Lord’s Day.  The longer you preach, the less we are given opportunities to keep the Lord’s Day like God meant us to: on the couch with a full belly of roast beef and potatotes and that stroopwaffel we shouldna had…

And we do need the rest, you see, ‘cuz listening to you is really hard work; after a morning of listening (well, not really listening, maybe, but hearing) to you, we need the recharge which a good food coma nap gives us. We need refreshment so we can come back later that evening and heap up complaints about how long and how poorly you preach then too, (First name).

(with false civility and ersatz affection),

The session

Gitte Van de Vander Ten Boorsma, Moderator

p.s., One day, we’ll teach you presbyterians how to do it the way the church in which we grew up did it. You know, the church that’s gone all liberal and woke…