Returning To the Pulpit
This Sunday felt like a bit of a milestone as I returned to the pulpit after nearly two years absence, courtesy of Covid and cancer.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer seven years ago God gave me a promise ‘I will not die, but will live and declare the works of the Lord’ (Ps 118:17), and when again all odds I recovered, I made this the mission of my life – declaring his works as a preacher, author and broadcaster. But since the onset of Covid in 2020 and my cancer diagnosis in 2021, this mission has been somewhat curtailed.
The fact that I am clinically extremely vulnerable means that for the last couple of years, I have been unable to travel to TBN’s TV studios to film and have been rendered a rather ineffective member of the ministry team of St Peter’s and St Paul’s. And instead have spent most of my time squirreled away in my home office writing my blog and my forthcoming book To the Ocean Floor . But at the start of 2022, I decided enough is enough. Although I am still going through treatment, I decided that I had to take the risk and return to church, first as a member of the congregation and now to the pulpit.
I have been preaching for some years now – and prior to my rather extended lockdown spoke all over the country in my capacity as an author - so I was rather surprised to wake on Sunday morning with butterflies in my stomach. I felt like a complete novice and frankly rather nervous (it doesn’t help the nerves that I preach where John Newton, author of the world famous hymn Amazing Grace, once declaimed! These are rather big boots to fill.)
And as I looked out on the morning’s pretty packed congregation, which included rows of Scouts and Cubs there to celebrate St George’s Day, I felt the full weight of the responsibility of sharing God’s word, and the challenge of doing so in a way that resonates with worshippers ranging in age from eight to eighty.
This is one of the great joys and challenges of church ministry. The church at its best is a melting pot of different ages, genders, ethnicity and cultural backgrounds. There is no audience segmentation or profiling just the glorious diversity of God’s people crammed into a building. And it’s the preachers task to share the living word with the gathered body of Christ in a way that inspires, encourages, challenges and comforts each and every soul.
It's an awesome responsibility and one which, in the midst of my recent cancer treatment, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever have the chance to take up again. So standing there once again at the pulpit, it felt very appropriate that the daily reading from the Acts of the Apostles was all about persisting in preaching.
Chapter Five of Acts recounts a time when the apostles were imprisoned by the religious leaders for their preaching. The authorities of the day originally thought that the troubling splinter group of Jesus followers had been snuffed out with his death, but following the resurrection, the ‘cult’ was only gathering momentum with an increasing number of converts baptised.
Luke recounts how the high priest and his associates were so jealous of the crowd the apostles were attracting with their preaching that they arrested them and put them in the public jail. But during the night, God supernaturally intervened, opening the doors of the jail and letting them out. Whereupon, undeterred, the apostles headed straight back to the temple courts and continued to boldly preach the gospel.
At the end of their tether, the religious authorities once again arrested the preachers and had Peter and the apostles brought before the Sanhedrin, where the high priest railed at them ‘We gave you strict orders not to preach in his name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching.’ To which Peter and the apostles quite simply replied, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.’(v 29)
Even when faced with a possible death sentence, the apostles refused to recant and to stop doing God’s work. It’s a great example of the persistence of faith and obedience to declaring the works of the Lord, in the face of seemingly overwhelming opposition.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t compare myself in any way to the apostles! But what I do recognise is that persistent urge within to speak (and write) about Jesus. It’s a gift from God, the persistence and urgency of faith in the midst of trials. It feels almost like an instinctive drive, buried deep within. And even when I was desperately ill while going through treatment it kept on surfacing, urging me on.
And while this Sunday’s preaching may have been a bit rusty, like the apostles, every atom in my anatomy is telling me to get up, dust myself off, and to return to this God-given mission to ‘declare the works of the Lord.’
Kate Nicholas is a preacher, Christian author, broadcaster and consultant. Her best-selling memoir Sea Changed (shortlisted as Christian Biography of the Year 2017) is an account of her unconventional journey of faith and previous healing from advanced cancer.
Her latest book, Soul’s Scribe (launched in 2021) draws on scripture, philosophy, psychology and over 20 years’ of reflection as a Christian communicator to take you on a journey through the various chapters of your soul story, providing you with the tools to share that story in a way that will inspire and encourage others.
Subscribe to Kate’s blog Faith, Life and Cancer to follow her healing journey.