There are not many professions that require you to give a 40 minute speech every week (or more):
- Where you are speaking on behalf of an authority greater than any Prime Minister or President
- That requires many hours of quiet study and reflection which will leave you simultaneously weary and excited
- Where speaking with complete truthfulness and clarity is essential
- Where you need unction
- That requires expert skills in reading texts, interpreting texts, understanding both history and contemporary culture, philosophy and anthropology, theology and psychology
- Where people listen voluntarily, not because they are paid
- Where people come to be rebuked and corrected (as well as encouraged).
- Where you are not to speak any new ideas, but repeat ideas that have been taught for 2000 years
- Where those listening will have their lives changed by what they hear
- Where the ultimate outcome means life or death
- Where the speaker invests his whole being into communicating the message, to the point of exhaustion
- Where you know that your words cannot achieve anything unless your boss makes it happen
- Where you may end up without a job, and even in prison or dead because of what you said
- That may change a whole city in 40 minutes
