What Some of My Friends Are Saying
Posted 4 years, 5 months ago at 11:46 pm. Add a comment
There was a time that I thought sermons were practically an art form. Now-a-days, I’d have to be out of my mind to argue that. Still, occasionally, there’s a friend or two in the preaching guild who strike a thoughtful phrase or few along the homiletical way. But most folks are not moved by clever words or careful thinking. For the most part, it’s the heart-felt sentiment that touches people.
Nancy and I attend the United Church of Christ in Forest Grove, Oregon when we’re in town. And every so often, somebody says something there that moves me. So I’ve included a few of those messages here.
The picture of a handsome and much younger man above is me–yikes, right?–standing on the front steps of the First Presbyterian Church of Carson City, Nevada, where I served as Pastor and Head of Staff to a congregation of seven hundred or more saints and sinners for nearly ten years in the mid-eighties and early nineties.
This year–and I’m embarrassed to say this–a less publicly-minded pastor will support the now much smaller congregation’s effort to tear down the oldest church building still standing in Nevada in the name of doing something meaningful for Jesus, I assume. It will be a sad day in Carson City’s history, all things considered. But a credible commentary on just how unhelpful and ineffective sermons actually are that otherwise good pastors and people could make such irreparable mistakes.
Ten years in Nevada taught me how slow the desert is to forgive such abuses . . . God bless them anyway.