The Cloud of Witnesses
In this sermon I reflect on Hebrews 12 and the Great Cloud of Witnesses. I have had the text on my mind since I spent time in England where people are actually buried and memorialized in the church. While this is not always a good idea, I think we Protestants may have missed something here. At the end of my sermon I invited people from my church to come forward and write names of important people to their faith who have gone on to glory.
30 Kesä 201521min
Leading with Story
God is constantly living a big story and inviting people to play a part in His story. What if the way God leads us is also a model for how we should lead others?
15 Kesä 201519min
Embody the Story
In this sermon I look at the body imagery of the Apostle Paul and think it through in terms of story. We as people embody our stories- we physically move into the stories that we see ourselves in. Marketers know this and invite us into a story with their products as part of the embodiment of our story. How does story give insight into how Paul talks about the faith? How do we learn to embody God's story about us instead of the world's story about us?
11 Kesä 201519min
Living the Story
Here I use the story of Nathan and David to look at how our lives our like stories and story can help us grow in our faith. I apologize for the abrupt start to the recording but I did not hit record for the first 2 minutes.
11 Kesä 201517min
Sabbath as Resistance
God said above all the commandments to remember the Sabbath and that the person who does not keep the Sabbath should be removed from the community or even put to death (Ex 31:12-17). Why is Sabbath so important to God? Why don't we practice Sabbath? How do we start a Sabbath habit in our world today? Many of the thoughts of this sermon came from or were inspired by Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann.
17 Touko 201520min
Rethinking Social Justice--Me and We
In this sermon I look at two aspects of our Christian Faith--The Me Gospel or personal salvation and The We Gospel of the kingdom or social justice. These are like two sides of the same coin. When we get too out of balance and emphasize one over the other, then the faith becomes warped to a point that it is no longer Christianity. I am indebted to the book Me and We by my teacher Leonard Sweet which helped me think deeply about this topic.
12 Touko 201518min
James : Pray, Praise, Confess (the last James sermon)
This is the conclusion to my series on the book of James. James is giving advice for staying a doer of the word throughout all of life's circumstances. We should lean into God through prayer and praise and into one another through confession and prayer. I also take some time to talk about anointing with oil because after the sermon I anointed those who wanted to with oil and prayer while they came forward for communion.
5 Touko 201520min
Of Members and Baptized Babies
On April 26 Westminster Church accepted 5 new members and we did an infant baptism. I took a few minutes to explain membership and baptism and what we believe about them.
27 Huhti 201510min
