The following sermon is an excerpt from Shook Foil Books Young Preachers Compilation, a collection of twenty thoughtful sermons from young (under
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This resource for worship or study is freely available for use and adaptation. Please remember to give us a shoutout! A Printing-friendly pdf of these reflections is available HERE (7 two-sided pages). Note from the Editors Though Advent is a season
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Lessons from Harry Emerson Fosdick On May 21, 1922, Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick climbed into the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church in New York City. It was a precarious time for the denomination. Congregations were battling each other. Members were chastising members. Conflict seemed the order of the day. The
MoreAn Ecumenical Vision for the 21st Century “In Christ God was reconciling the world…and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” –II Corinthians 5:19 You won’t be surprised that a professor of Ecumenical Studies has chosen to write on the gift of the ecumenical movement for our common Christian pilgrimage.
MoreA Response to the Foothills Presbytery Overtures I try to avoid getting bogged down in the details of church polity. Generally, this is because I think it leads us to spend too much time looking inward and debating minutia when that time and effort would be better spent looking outward,
MoreThe Growth of Missional Language Missio-Logio: The Many Languages of Mission The theme of the 2015 annual meeting American Society of Missiology (ASM) was “Missio-Logoi: The Many Languages of Mission.” It was a fascinating conference, with missionaries and scholars from across denominations and from many traditions meeting in Wheaton, Illinois.
MoreI was teaching youth and college Sunday school a few years ago, and we were discussing the Apostles’ Creed, particularly the part where Christians confess belief in the ‘holy and catholic church’. One student spoke up and asked what the Creed meant by ‘catholic’. Without much thought, I rattled off
MoreThe party had turned to crying. Children, women, and men – mostly Muslims and a few Christians – who were seen as disabled or otherwise, impaired had gathered in the ancient North African Medina to celebrate the town’s first therapy center for children with motor disabilities. In that society, as
MoreIn our current context, is the Church missional – or missing? It’s a loaded question, isn’t it? A little too black and white, perhaps, considering the question that almost inevitably follows: What is the Church’s mission? That question, too, is almost designed for failure – or at least for absurdity
More“When you set out on this adventure, you will never be the same.” These are the grave but hopeful words spoken by Gandalf the Grey to a young hobbit named Bilbo; [1] and thus begins the epic tale of The Hobbit. In many ways, following Christ mirrors this classic tale of a
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I was sitting around a table with a group of colleagues in young adult ministries about a year and a half ago. We had been tasked with coming up with a name for a new initiative to the PC(USA)’s 221st General Assembly, an initiative that would eventually be known as
MoreSermon delivered by Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II on Tuesday, June 30, 2015 on the occasion of remembering the Charleston 9 and embracing the issue of race in the United States. The worship service was held in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Originally published
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