I want to get this out on the table straightaway. I’d like to put my greatest homiletic fear out there, which I have reason to believe is the summus terror of many of my fellow preachers.
The fear is not that I’ll lose my place in the sermon or forget what I’m saying; not that I might accidentally say something heterodox if not heretical; not even that my sermon will inadvertently go viral because of some supposedly regressive comment I made in the pulpit—though I’m not particularly keen to experience any of these, either.
No, my greatest fear is simply this: that I’ll be exposed for the phony I am.