Someone had nominated me to attend the Young Preacher's Seminar at the local Bible college. It was a weekend away where young men could discover whether or not preaching was something they were particularly gifted for. At first, it was a ridiculously boring idea to me. I threw the letter away and thought nothing of it. They would have to come drag me away from important things like television.

I should have burned the letter to ash if I wanted to thoroughly avoid going, because my father managed to fish it from the trash. The tides turned against me, and there was very little I could do. I told him I would go, but "don't expect much of anything."

When all was said and done, I actually found myself enraptured by the work we did at the seminar. We rummaged around in a text from the Book of Ezekiel, sketched a general map as to how to express its truths, and were sent home to write a sermon for our respective congregations.

Actually preach? I wasn't so confident that would happen. Nonetheless, I hid myself away in my bedroom and worked on a sermon. When I resurfaced, I took the tattered notebook pages to my youth minister.

Two weeks later, I preached my first sermon at a Sunday night youth service.

The sermon lasted a good 10–12 minutes for a good 10–12 people. The thin attendance wasn't a surprise to me, because it was Super Bowl night. Seeing as it was 1994, the attendees were probably Buffalo Bills fans (why should they watch the game when they just knew they were going to lose yet again?). I wore a tie that I tied myself. I did my best to ride a ball of fire while I stood behind a chariot of a pulpit. I got an "Amen" in the middle and received an adequate amount of hugs and handshakes at the end. Feeling those were good signs, I headed home to catch the rest of the game with my friends (Dallas 30, Buffalo 13).

Frederick Buechner writes, "The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet." At a sparsely attended Sunday night worship gathering, I felt the two kiss for the first time. I would preach the Word with each breath God gave me.

Here is how I fell in love with this great act we call preaching. I wonder—what's your story? Anyone out there want to share, in a nutshell, how God prodded you along to this calling?