I had the privilege of preaching at Niverville Community Fellowship this morning. In November, I will be presenting series of seminars in their adult education program on ethical issues surrounding Medically Assisted Dying. However, from a Christian perspective, it’s impossible to ask what it might mean to die a good death, if you don’t first consider what it means to live a good life. Hence the title of my upcoming series, “Living Well, Dying Well.” In advance of that series I preached a sermon this morning that brought Psalm 8, Genesis 3:1-7 and Hebrews 2:5-18 into conversation. You can watch the sermon here. (The sermon begins around the 36 minute mark.)
Tag Archives: preaching
Powerful Preaching: Fleming Rutledge’s Parchman Lectures
Fleming Rutledge recently delivered the Parchman Lectures at Truett Divinity School located at Baylor University on the theme “By the Word Worked: The Unique Power of Biblical Preaching.” I recently had the opportunity to watch the first two lectures which are available for public viewing through the Parchman Lectures Media Library.
In the second half of the first lecture, Rutledge incisively identified four trends that weaken the power of contemporary preaching, before positing five counter-affirmations about the power of the preached word. In what follows, I’ll attempt to summarize her important observations, in the hope of encouraging interested readers to watch the lecture itself. Continue reading Powerful Preaching: Fleming Rutledge’s Parchman Lectures
The Preacher as Bridge-Builder: A Misguided Metaphor
One of the more prominent homiletical metaphors that is operative in the imaginations of preachers of many different stripes and backgrounds is that of the preacher as a bridge-builder between the ancient world of Scripture and our current cultural moment. Through careful rhetorical engineering, the preacher is able to construct a bridge that is capable of carrying the biblical freight across the chasm of the ages, in the process demonstrating its relevance for today. Continue reading The Preacher as Bridge-Builder: A Misguided Metaphor
“The Death of an Extremist”: A Good Friday Sermon
Over the summer, my Good Friday sermon “The Death of an Extremist” appeared as the Feature Sermon in an issue of Theodidaktos on the theme of “Atonement: What is the Message of the Cross?” Theodidaktos is published by the Evangelical Mennonite Conference. The sermon goes back to my time serving as a congregational pastor in Toronto, but it is one of my favourites, narrowly missing the cut for inclusion in Leaps of Faith. Continue reading “The Death of an Extremist”: A Good Friday Sermon
The Pulpit is a Prow
“Yet the preacher of the gospel of grace cannot be a mere minstrel, grinning good cheer in an age of despair. The preacher’s struggle against the darkness of this present world must be furnished with a full kit: the Bible, the sword of the Spirit, understandable now as it was not understood prior to modernity;1 the history of God’s peaceable Israel old and ongoing (called in Scripture the preparation of the gospel of peace); and supremely (though like the Trinity never so named in Scripture) the primary theology that gives our sermon its center, its raison d’être, its point. Continue reading The Pulpit is a Prow
- While not denying the gains of modern biblical scholarship, I would be inclined to see the legacy of the historical critical method of interpreting the Bible in more ambiguous terms than McClendon seems to at this point. ↩
Hans Boersma on Handling Scripture
There is an excellent essay by Hans Boersma in the current issue of First Things entitled “Fear of the Word” that grapples with some of the fundamental struggles and assumptions about Scripture that haunt preachers today. Here’s an excerpt: Continue reading Hans Boersma on Handling Scripture