the church geek

The following is a bit of personal news for my “Meaty Monday” post:

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. Romans 8:15-16

Did you ever stop to think that adoption is one of the primary images in the scriptures for those who come to faith in Christ? The apostle Paul uses this metaphor to help us understand that when we come to faith, we are invited to become part of a much larger family of faith. We are made part of the family of God.

I’ve been thinking a lot about adoption lately. At the end of last year, Lori and I began giving serious thought and prayer to pursuing adopting a child internationally, as a way of raising our own family. For a variety of reasons we eventually settled on pursuing adoption from Ethiopia, a country located in East Africa.

Adoption is both a lengthy and expensive process. In May, we took part in a two day long pre-adoption seminar to learn more about the various issues and concerns related to adoption and just what exactly the process entails. Over the summer months we have been working with a social worker from our adoption agency to complete a home study.

The good news is that we have been “home study approved.” Part of our home study process, for us, entailed making a decision as to the age and number of children we would be willing to adopt. After a lot of thought and study, we finally settled on being open to adopt a young sibling group, with the possibility of perhaps adopting twins.

We are now beginning to prepare all the necessary documents that need to be submitted to Ethiopia. Following that comes a period of waiting for a referral that may last anywhere from 6 to 9 months, perhaps a bit longer. Once we receive a referral from the country, Lori and I will travel to Ethiopia to accept our new child(ren) into our family.

We are both excited and a little apprehensive about this very big step in our lives. While it is daunting to consider the prospect of parenting as a trans-cultural, trans-racial family, we also anticipate the various challenges, joys, and rewards that come as part of raising any family.

As I think about the process of adoption, I am encouraged by the words Actress Isabella Rosellini, who adopted a son who was part African-American, wrote in her autobiography:

In comparison to having a biological child…adoption carries the added dimension of connection not only to your own tribe but beyond, widening the scope of what constitutes love, ties, and family. It is a larger embrace.

I think that’s partly what the Apostle Paul was trying to say to us as well. When we are adopted by God into the community of faith our connection and identity moves beyond the family we grew up in. The circle of our family is widened to include connections beyond our own tribe, to include the embrace of the much larger and greater family of faith.

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Since I’ve been in my current congregation, the deacon board has been a pretty weak spot in our organization and ministry. If you ask what the deacons do here, the answer you will typically get is focused on two things 1.) kitchen duty for fellowship hour and 2.) counting the weekly offering.

To be fair, there are a few regular mission projects that are part of the deacon’s purview but for the most part those two maintenance functions are the sum of the deacon’s current ministry. This is of course a far cry from what our book of order describes as the duties of the deacon:

It is the duty of the deacons, first of all, to minister to those who are in need, to the sick, to the friendless, and to any who may be in distress both within and beyond the community of faith. They shall assume other duties as may be delegated to them from time to time by the session, such as leading people in worship through prayers of intercession, reading the scriptures, presenting the gifts of the people, and assisting with the Lord’s Supper.

Since late spring, we’ve been actively working to change the culture of the deacon board. With the renewed attention and focus, they’ve been very responsive to reviewing and expanding their current ministry in order to better fulfill their calling.

Yesterday the deacon board decided to organize itself and assign specific people to look at four areas of ministry:

1.) Church function - this entails the various duties that deacons have around the church to help it operate like fellowship hour, money counting, and preparing for the Lord’s Supper.

2.) Congregational Care - this includes the care and nurture of church members; shut-in visits, funeral receptions, care for grieving members, etc.

3.) Outreach - this includes ministries for welcoming our visitors, inviting new or potential members into church life, and finding ways to establish relationships with our neighbors.

4.) Mission - this includes the various mission projects of the church, as well as finding ways to help our neighbors who are in need.

This is great and exciting stuff! For too long the deacon board has been focused on church function…meaning that the deacons were primarily concerned about the maintenance of the church…and there was little excitement or enthusiasm for that work among the deacon board.

Now, we are beginning to move our focus and attention in an outward direction. I sense that a fresh wind of the Spirit has begun and will begin to continue to blow in and through us.

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Recently I wrote a review of the book Countdown to Sunday by Chris Erdman. He provides a helpful exegetical process for pastors ‘on the run’ which I have employed to some effect over the past three weeks.

Honestly his book is the most helpful thing I’ve come across in a long time about the task of preaching. I was particularly ‘convicted’ by the following, which comes from his chapter called Illustration:

I began to realize that people loved the stories I told, the illustrations that populated my well-crafted sermons, but showed little evidence they were growing in their love for the Story. They were increasingly dependent on my words, but not on the Word.

As I read this, I find that it’s somewhat akin to what we tend to do with our children; you know the bribe that gets them to listen to what we have to say or to do what we want them to do. For instance you might give them a piece of candy if they memorize a bible verse or you give them a treat if they behave during the children’s sermon.

Such bribes communicate that there is little value in what you want them to do. The value is in the treat they get. Sermon illustrations are a little bit like that candy bribe. They cheapen the value of the biblical text. The better the illustration, the less the value is on the actual text.

Erdman goes on to argue that the best sermon illustration is a congregation that begins to live out the Story; valuing the Word for what it is and seeking to emulate the sort of church the Word calls it to be.

For my part, it is so easy to get caught in the trap of searching for just the right sermon illustration and letting that search guide the sermon preparation. I have often approached the exegetical process the wrong way…looking for an illustration to illuminate the text rather than letting the text guide me into a reflection about how it calls us as the church to illustrate, or live it out.

Sometimes you can’t help but approach things that way, especially if you think you are too busy to do good exegetical work or if you make it a habit to read preaching journals and homiletical guides on the text before you actually sit down to pray and ask, “What does this Word have to say to us today?”

Over the past three weeks I have given up searching for sermon illustrations. I have not plucked a story from a source and said, “I think this might fit here.” Instead I have simply tried to attend to the text and to how other Biblical texts might inform the primary text. I have asked the question, “How are we to live as a result of this text?” If an illustration or two comes to mind, that gives folks an entry point into the text, then great. If not, I simply preach what I have.

And I think, or at least feel, that my preaching the last three weeks has been much better off for it. Now we’ll see if the congregation eventually catches on and comes to grow in their love for the Story.

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Sometime in the spring, we had a woman visit our congregation. I had a brief chat with her prior to the service and asked her how she found out about our church. She shared with me that she had just moved into the neighborhood and was happy to find out that there was a “pentecostal” church right around the corner.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we were actually a “p-r-e-s-b-y-t-e-r-i-a-n” church, but once the service started I think she pretty quickly figured out that we were nothing like the sort of pentecostal church she thought she came to visit. We didn’t see or hear from her after that visit.

Recently, we had another visitor, and before the service we chatted about the various Presbyterian congregations in the city. This visitor then asked me if there were any churches in our city that were “pentecostal” in the character of their music and ministry.

These types of chats before the church service always make me a little nervous. I start thinking about how the visitor will be disappointed that we just weren’t the type of church they were looking for. I wonder if they are politely sitting in the worship service, all the while critiquing the theology, the scriptural interpretation, and the style of our worship music. I look at them during the service and wonder what is going through their mind.

I suppose my desire for visitors to accept and enjoy what we do here can’t be helped, but the reality is that we simply cannot be all things for all people. What we can do, however, is strive to be faithful to God and to the gospel of Jesus Christ, be the absolute best at what we do, and not apologize if our best does not turn out to be what our visitor came here looking for.

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I have written here in the past about how over the first couple years of my ministry I switched from primarily being a lectionary preacher to being a sermon series preacher. I made the switch primarily because I was feeling as if there was more energy and creativity when I preached a sermon series as opposed to preaching from the lectionary.

That was true for quite some time, but now I think that perhaps I am swinging in the other direction.

I’ve been finding that with the sermon series, I don’t stick very close to the text. In fact the text becomes somewhat ancillary to the sermon. With the types of topical sermon series I’ve done as of late, the starting point for the sermon is often “What do I want to say this Sunday?” not “What does the text have to say to us this Sunday?”

Perhaps I’m just hungry for some good scripture study and honest wrestling with the text. I realize that there are lots of other ways I could do that, like a sermon series on a particular book, or preaching on a set of stories based on a particular character in the bible, but for now I think I’ll go back to the lectionary and see how that sits with me for a while.

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I’m beginning to do some preaching in my congregation that really speaks to our moving to a missional focus. Currently, I’m in the midst of a series on discipleship and yesterday spoke about the fact that the church really needs to begin to turn its focus outward. The direction of our faith and Christianity is necessarily toward the world and not toward the church as an organization.

The impetus of my sermon was that as a congregation we can no longer afford to focus on our current 94 members, instead we need to begin to focus on our next 94 members.

To me, that means a lot of things. Some of them entail 1.) no longer giving money and calling it “mission,” 2.) no longer designing worship services and other programs just with our members ‘needs’ in mind, and 3.) inviting friends to join us and having places (small groups) where people can plug in and learn about the faith from our current members.

Two comments following my sermon struck me as indicators that we have a long way to go and that I have a lot of work to do to help us get this missional focus thing down….

Last year we decided to no longer pay for our church to advertise in our local newspaper in the religion section on Saturday morning…Part of the reason? 1.) The only people who look at those ads are our church members. It makes them feel good when they see it, but that’s about the limits of their effectiveness, 2.) We decided to invest our time and money in a website.

In response to my sermon, someone said to me yesterday that we really need to put that ad back in the newspaper. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this…the underlying assumption is that spending a few bucks on advertising is what is going to grow the kingdom and bring people to visit our church. Unfortunately, I think its a way to absolve the members from having to do anything to be a part of helping the church to grow, and that’s not missional thinking…

The second comment I heard was “I don’t have any friends who don’t go to church, so I must be hanging out in the right crowds!?!” The answer is no, and again, that’s not missional thinking. You really need to have some friends in your circles who are not Christian…if this church is going to grow it’s going to be by your listening to others no matter where they are in their faith journey, inviting them to think about the faith, and asking them come join us as we explore this thing together.

I’m realizing this moving to a missional focus is a monumental change. It’s a big change for me as I begin to think about my ministry differently and as I think about what it’s going to require in my preaching and leadership within this congregation. It’s also a big change for this congregation.

But, I’m becoming more and more convinced that if we’re going to have any success together then we all have got to change our focus. That focus needs to be missional, and its direction needs to be outward, toward the world around us.

Please pray for me and for us!

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We’ve been on vacation and just returned from a few days in the Twin Cities.

Our original plan was to hang around to attend the weekly Sunday evening gathering at Solomon’s Porch, but for various reasons we headed back earlier in the afternoon. Still, we did get a chance to worship with the folks at the Spirit Garage, a ELCA church plant that meets at the Music Box theater.

I love going to these types of creative Christian communities. I get a big charge from seeing folks do church in totally different and unique ways. I love seeing folks who are intentionally reaching out to those who have little or no church experience, who are inviting the entire body to be part of and to participate in a truly collaborative worship experience, and who are being creative and intentional about the ways they are involved in mission and ministry in the larger community.

At the same time, I come away from these types of excursions with just a bit of sadness.

Now, don’t get me wrong…I love my church and I love my current ministry. It is the right place for me at this point and time in my life. But at the same time I wonder how can we (or I) do more? How can we reach out with greater intentionality to the world around us? How can we be more innovative and creative in order to invite those who may not darken the door of the church into a relationship with Christ?

Sometimes I think our church should start a weekly gathering that looks nothing like our traditional worship service, but then I think I’m only one person, I can’t do that on my own and still keep things going on a regular Sunday morning. I also don’t have incredible gifts of creativity and our church doesn’t have a very deep purse….so such a thing would require other folks who have caught the same sort of vision to step up to the plate, to say funds don’t matter, and to rise up and help put it together.

Other times I think I should go be a pastor for a new church development. But then I know myself well enough to know that I’m simply not the type of person who is going to sit in a coffee shop and talk to every person I meet or get out into the community and make so many contacts in order to invite people to gather. That is just not who I am or how I am wired. Plus the truth of the matter is that I like being paid for what I do and there is no financial stability in starting church plants…

Then I think, well, maybe a few churches in our Presbytery, or maybe within our Cedar Rapids areas, should just get together and collaboratively resource and put together an emerging church service and ministry. But then I get a big headache thinking about all the issues of control, and who has the purse strings, and how such a beast would ever get off the ground from the get go?

So, at this point I just have all this stuff swimming around in my head. I continue to study and to read about the emerging church and the great things that are happening in pockets across the country. I continue to visit these types of communities when I have a chance. And perhaps most importantly I continue to seek God in prayer, asking what I am to do with all of this innovative church stuff?

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My wife and I are very much looking forward to a much needed week of vacation coming up in a few weeks. In some respects it’s hard to believe that this will be our first week of vacation since the last week of August. As we anticipate our time away, we are always somewhat conflicted about how to spend it.

One difficulty is that we have a number of fairly sizeable outdoor and indoor projects that are requiring our attention. It seems that it is hard for us to get those sorts of projects done during our normal routine because we just don’t get a significant enough chunk of time off together on our weekends.

Fridays are our usual day off, but those often turn out to be our cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping sort of days and aren’t really conducive to starting a big project were not sure how long it will take to finish. So when vacation time approaches we think here’s our list of projects, which ones should we try to do? But who really wants to spend their vacation working around the house??

Another difficulty also has to do with the fact that we don’t get weekends. Meaning we don’t get to travel to visit our families or friends when other folks might be able to do that sort of thing over the weekend (especially over an extended weekend like memorial day & labor day which are non-existent for a pastor…) So, we think about the last time we saw so and so and we wonder if its time to hop in the car or get on the plane to go see them. While these are good and important trips for us to take, spending ourselves with people as we do on our jobs can make these types of vacations seem like more work than relaxation.

As pastors we’re also church nerds. So, when we get a Sunday off, we often ask where would we like to go worship? We think about the various churches we know or have heard about or that one of our favorite colleagues serves and we ask should we plan a trip to worship there? (In fact we do have reason to be in the Minneapolis area on this particular vacation and while we are there we are thinking about another trip to Solomon’s Porch.)

There of course have been the occasional Sundays on our vacations where we are so tired of church we decide not to go at all (but please don’t tell that to any of the members of our congregations…if you’re one of them you didn’t just read that…)

I think all of this is to say that while we definitely look forward to our vacations, we just don’t look forward to making all the decisions we need to make in order to plan them. Am I alone in this sort of dilemma?

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I had a really hard time with my sermon this last week. I preached on two 1 Peter passages 1 Peter 2:18-25; 3:8-12 and addressed the practices of non-violence and non-retaliation.

The essential core of my sermon came from these verses:

Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps…When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

In my sermon I pointed out that as I hear about events that are happening in the news I’m more and more concerned that we are spiraling into a society where violence and retaliation are becoming the norm. In contrast, Peter offers a different model for Christians, one in which these two things are not the norm. Peter clearly expects Christians to live by a different standard than the world around them.

Here’s the basic problem I’ve been dealing with: I offered no caveats in my sermon. Now, I did that for the very specific reason that I didn’t want to water down the message by saying it applies to this and this, but it doesn’t apply to that and that. I didn’t want people trying to figure out the various loopholes that might be available to get out of the difficulty of the message.

But that choice of mine may have come at an expense. It may very well have meant that someone who is suffering in an inappropriate and abusive relationship (though I’m not aware that anyone is in our congregation) or someone who has suffered some form of abuse (which is more likely in my congregation) may very well have heard the message, “Just endure it. It’s your calling as a Christian.”

This raises in my mind an ethical concern in preaching. I don’t remember this sort of issue or concern being raised or addressed in seminary, but I think it happens all the time. At the expense of making one important point, you may very well have to minimize contrasting viewpoints. So how do you go about weighing those things and determining the greater good?

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Over the last couple of years, I’ve been slowly working on the culture of prayer in our congregation. It’s not the quickest or easiest thing to do to change the spiritual ethos of any congregation, but here are few things we’ve done to help with that.

* About three or four months ago we began to publish a list of prayer requests in our worship bulletin. As a result, during the week, I’ve been getting phone calls and e-mails from congregation members wanting various people and needs put on the prayer list. A number of people have shared with me that they appreciate knowing that their concern is being lifted up by others in prayer. Right now the list leans heavily toward prayers for health concerns, but I’ve been thinking about expanding that and including other areas of concern on the list.

* When I first started here, I began our session meetings with a scripture and a short devotion and then asked session members for their joys and concerns. We have a prayer we say together and then I invite elders to pray, as they feel led, for the various joys and concerns as they’ve been mentioned. Sometimes, I’ll ask an elder at the end of the session meeting to close us in prayer too. I’m sure some are terrified by this, but I’m always surprised and pleased when an elder I haven’t heard pray before steps up to do it.

* I haven’t done as much of this as I’d like, but I’ve tried different types of prayers as models during the pastoral prayer portion of the worship service. I’d like to experiment with this more. In the past I have prayed model prayers, for instance I’ve used the five finger prayer and the Lord’s prayer as an outline and then prayed for specific things within that framework. I have also used bidding prayers where I suggest a category and invite people to pray for things silently (one time a congregational member actually prayed out loud, I’d love to hear more of that, and have wondered about encouraging more of that!!) I hope this helps people think about all the types of things they can and should be praying for.

All of these things I think are helping to re-shape the spiritual ethos of our congregation. I hope they are helping people see the different ways they can pray and I hope they are helping give them more confidence about prayer.

I’d be curious to hear if you have any creative ways of encouraging the growth of prayer in your congregation?

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Jan’s post this morning stirred up some things I’ve been thinking about for a while now…

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately on the Emergent Church and have also been delving into N.T. Wright’s work on the scriptures. As a result, I’m becoming more and more convinced that there is really something to the power of seeing the bible as narrative; as seeing it articulating the story of God’s work in the world and empowering the church in its calling within that story.

For the Easter season I’ve been studying and preaching on the texts in First Peter. Within that letter, Peter helps the gentile converts see how they’ve been enfolded into God’s story. How through the new birth of Israel the doors have been opened for them to enter into the fold of God’s chosen people.

It’s a brilliant move that gives ‘those people who were not a people’ an identity. It also helps them frame their struggles and persecutions within the larger story of God’s work; encompassing their present in what has happened in the past and the hope of what God will do in the future.

All of this has helped me begin to make a little more sense of those passages (especially in Matthew) that point to the ‘prediction’ of events in the Old Testament prophets that have been ‘fulfilled’ in Jesus Christ. In some sense, the early Christians took the themes of the prophets and framed the Jesus movement within the context of God’s work in history.

They enfolded their own story within the context of the much larger story of God’s work in Israel and in history. When it comes to Christians today, I think this has much to say to us. It helps us find our own identity in that much greater story. That is powerful stuff.

But here’s my struggle: Before I began engaging in the emergent church and exploring the scripture as narrative, I read Amy Jill-Levine’s book The Misunderstood Jew. I came away both impressed and convicted by the way the church can mis-read some of the New Testament texts and how they have often been mis-interpreted in ways that have done violence to the Jewish community of faith.

But, at the same time, I can’t see the Bible as telling an over-arching narrative without seeing that story as a comprehensive one detailing God’s continuous work encompassed in both the Old and the New Testament; seeing it as a somewhat seamless story, from the call of Abraham, to the rise of the church, to my own life today.

Maybe I don’t go so far - as Matthew seemed to have no problem with doing - as to use the word fulfillment, but I still in the end lean toward seeing it as a somewhat seamless story. At the very least, the New Testament gives voice to what happened in Jesus Christ by picking up and giving new life to all the shattered hopes and dreams of the people of Israel following their return from exile.

So does the way I see that over-arching story necessarily imply that I am doing violence to the Jewish faith? Is there someway to tell that story that still honors the Jewish faith, that doesn’t say the Jewish faith has been replaced? I don’t know. I’m still working on that, and I don’t have an answer. But at the very least Levine’s book reminds me to be much more careful about the ways I choose to tell that story.

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Yesterday, after watching the great Kansas/Davidson men’s basketball game I did some reflecting on the sermon I preached earlier in the day. As I thought about the game and about my sermon, I decided that my preaching suffers from one problem: It feels as if I seldom put together a complete game.

Sometimes, like Davidson, I can put in a good 33-35 minute effort, but I can’t seem to finish it off. Other times I have a good start and a great finish, but I have a lapse of 5 or 10 minutes in the middle. No matter how it happens, I seem unable to put in a full 40. (Now don’t worry this is a metaphor, my friends, I seldom preach for more than 20 minutes….)

More often than not I have a really good beginning; a story that catches people’s attention or a joke that gets at the heart of my sermon. Sometimes, but not as often, I have a great ending, something that sums things up and hammers home my point. Occasionally, I have a perfect story in the middle that captures the essence of my message.

But it seems like I’m seldom able to get all three phases of the sermon going all at the same time. Often I find the endings of my sermons to be too abrupt, like I just ran out of things to say and I’m not quite sure how to end it and tie it all together. Other times, especially when it feels like I have to do some background work explaining a particular scripture passage, it seems like I get bogged down in the middle.

I’m not really sure how to correct this problem, or maybe it doesn’t need correcting and it’s just a matter of my own perception.

As for yesterday’s sermon, I was away from the office for two days. While I did a lot of reading during the week in preparation, I didn’t actually sit down and start writing until Saturday (definitely not my preferred preparation process…) Sometimes that means I don’t have the time to find a good illustration or two, or I’m desperately trying to tie things together and my thought process is too slow to work under the time pressure. Sometimes it’s just delivery; I haven’t adequately gone over the sermon enough times to pull off a great delivery.

All that reminds me that the best strategy for me is to get started with my reading and my study on Monday…so I’m signing off for now and getting to work.

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I realize it’s Tuesday and this “Meaty Monday” comes about 24 hours too late, we took a day off yesterday to rest up a bit after a busy Holy Week.

I’ve decided to wade in a little bit into the controversy between Barack Obama and his long-time minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright. These are just a few loosely connected thoughts from my perspective:

1.) I can’t remember who it was that said this, but there is a popular saying out there that the preacher’s job is to “comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” I take that to mean that we shouldn’t always be in a position of agreement with our minister. He or she should be saying things that we may not agree with and that will challenge us.

2.) While I think Rev. Wright used a poor choice of words in saying “God damn America,” the whole of his message, from Sunday to Sunday, is what really needs to be judged not just a sound bite or two taken out of context. Also, it’s not just the preacher’s words that need to be evaluated. The preacher is more than words, the preacher is the sum of his/her character. How do they love their people? How does the message of their life compliment the words from the pulpit? Those are the questions we need to be asking. It’s quite possible to disagree with things said from the pulpit and still respect, love and stand up for your minister because of the integrity of the message and the entire package of the minister’s life.

3.) I had the chance to hear Dr. Wright preach a year or two ago at Dubuque Seminary. I walked away thinking “Wow, that sure was a challenge.” He said some things from the pulpit that I found difficult to hear and I am sure that others found difficult as well, especially considering the fact that he was preaching to a predominantly white, middle class, and male audience. But I also came away thinking that most of what he said was truthful, honest, spot on, and needed to be said.

4.) And speaking of being truthful, I’m going to raise some hackles with this one: Obama’s church is often criticized for being “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.” What’s the big deal??? I mean think about most churches in America: Aren’t most of our churches “Unashamedly White?” they just don’t go around advertising it. Really, now, who is being more honest and truthful?

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…because I gave up meat for Holy Week.

Well, actually I started to write an entry this morning and then decided I didn’t really want to talk about that particular topic, but then I never came up with anything else to write about. So sorry, no meaty Monday today.

That line that started my post? It’s attributed to my wife. She is very funny and often makes me laugh.

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When I was in seminary (I graduated about three years ago), I was all fired up about preaching from the Lectionary. There were a number of things that appealed to me about the lectionary and preaching from it:

* I liked the idea of having a standard list of texts to preach from carefully chosen by the lectionary committee. In theory that would ensure that I’d preach from texts I might not normally chose to preach from, and that over an extended length of time my congregation would hear from more of the Bible than they otherwise might.

* I liked the idea of having to struggle with a particular text that happened to be placed in front of me for that particular week. It would force me to focus and hone in on that passage and really wrestle with its meaning, struggling to hear a “word from the Lord” for my congregation in that week.

* I liked the regularity of the liturgical year, the various seasons of the church calendar, and the subsequent texts built around themes for those seasons. There is definitely something to establishing a regular rhythm for our common life together.

While I liked those things in theory, in practice, the lectionary just didn’t work out for me. Here’s what I found out:

* Sure, I’d learn from and wrestle with any given text, but when it came down to it, I had a hard time figuring out what the message of the text was for my congregation in that place and time. It almost seemed as if lectionary preaching was out of rhythm with what I was sensing the congregation really needed to hear.

* I also didn’t gain much energy or enthusiasm for preaching. In fact I often found it to be a dull and lifeless exercise. I also had a hard time finding sermon illustrations to fit with the text or creative entry points that would help the congregation enter into the text.

So, now over the last year or so I’ve gone primarily to preaching sermon series. In doing so, I have preached on a number of different themes. Focusing on things like: NT encounters with Jesus, living the spiritual life, Psalms you should know, questions of faith, the Apostle’s Creed.

I love it! I have found more energy and enthusiasm in my preaching. I feel more creative and as if the Spirit is more present in my preparation and in the preaching. I have had to wrestle with issues and doctrines of our faith in order to teach/preach them. I do more reading in preparation for my sermons. I have an easier time with illustrations and preaching paths.

I also think I’ve connected better with my congregation as a result. And more importantly, I think I’ve helped my congregation connect better with God and with others.

So far, this has been the only drawback I have identified: I just don’t end up doing as much in depth study on a particular passage. Unless I’m preaching through a book of the Bible or on a series of passages, my sermons are less tied to and drawn from a particular text. Which means, I don’t do as much exegetical work as I should and that bothers me a great deal!

Have you struggled with lectionary preaching? Have you ventured out beyond it?

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