Preaching from the lectionary

I am a Baptist.  Each Sunday I preach from the texts of the revised common lectionary.  What’s wrong with this picture? These are not contradictory statements, believe it or not.  Although I come from a free church, and not a liturgical tradition, I choose my preaching text each Sunday from the revised common lectionary.  Here’s [...]

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What others are saying about doing church

Here’s some of the conversation around the blogosphere this week about doing church –  Thanks to Emergent Village for putting me onto Nate Bettger’s post about “‘Doing Church’ like everyone else…”  Here’s a sample: As I wrestle with accepting having 6 to 10 people at our weekly gathering, people “shopping” gets to be pretty brutal. We [...]

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Struggling with real faith in a less-than-perfect world

 The NY Times carried a story today of a United Methodist Church struggling with how to maintain its stand against the death penalty, while mourning the murder of three of its members — a mother and her two teenage daughters.  Members expressed concern that their previously unquestioned opposition to the death penalty might be hurtful [...]

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Faith Puts You In Your Place

Faith Puts You In Your Place (mp3) Luke 18:9-14 The Great Dizzy Dean When I was a kid, which was a long time ago, our little TV set picked up three channels — NBC, CBS, and ABC. On Saturday afternoon, in addition to the Army’s Big Picture, The Baseball Game of the Week came on. [...]

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Sermon for Sunday, Oct 28

I’ve just posted my sermon for Sunday, October 28, 2007.  The title is Faith Puts You in Your Place and the lectionary text is the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector from Luke 18:9-14.  Have a great day Sunday!

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Willow Creek Study Says Church Programs Don’t Work

The ground has just shifted under the evangelical world.  Willow Creek, that combination mega-church and mini-denomination, has just discovered that church programs don’t work.  Here’s their conclusion – …increasing levels of participation in these sets of activities [church programs] does NOT predict whether someone’s becoming more of a disciple of Christ. It does NOT predict whether [...]

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Faithful Prayer for Justice

Faithful Prayer for Justice (mp3) Text: Luke 18:1-8 The Parable of the Persistent Widow 1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3 And [...]

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Sermon for Sunday, October 21

I just posted my sermon for Sunday, October 21, 2007 — Faithful Prayer for Justice.  I’m not wild about the title, but found this entire passage of Luke 18:1-10 fascinating.  It’s the story of the persistent widow who is granted justice by the unjust judge simply because of her persistence.  But, you must also understand [...]

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“I’m not doing anything wrong”

Recently some poor soul googled “sermon – I’m not doing anything wrong” and landed on my blog.  I am pretty sure they didn’t find a sermon by me titled, “I’m not doing anything wrong” but maybe they found something helpful.  I hope so. Anyway, when I saw the search, my first thought was, “If you’re preaching a [...]

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Free techie stuff for church and ministry

I am about to tell you more than I know about some cool new tech stuff for your church and ministry.  And, it’s all free.  I am not a techie, so do not email me with dense questions.  I am passing on some innovative, usable tech tools that look good to me.  Here’s the list:

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