Ministry Matters: Matthew L. Kelley

BLOG: Gun Control: A Biblical and Theological Case

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 20:32:14 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

The issue of gun control in the United States is once again at the forefront of our national conversation due to last month’s school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut—one of many similar incidents whose frequency is on the rise.

A lot of people are giving passionate and articulate cases for their particular position, and as I am neither a constitutional scholar nor an expert on firearms or public safety, I will leave those arguments to those that speak on them with authority.

I do, however, believe that the church has a significant role to play in this conversation, and I believe that the biblical witness and our theological heritage give us reason to support restrictions on firearms such as those currently being debated by the President and Congress.

I do not cite these scriptures as “proof-texts,” nor do I claim that this is the only understanding one has to arrive at to be a true follower of Jesus. I also want to state at the beginning that while I am not a gun owner, I support the rights of people to possess firearms in their home for protection and for use in hunting or other recreation.

With those disclaimers out of the way, here is what I believe to be a biblical and theological case for gun control: I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful.

I have the freedom to do anything, but I won’t be controlled by anything. 1 Corinthians 6:12

Everything is permitted, but everything isn’t beneficial. Everything is permitted, but everything doesn’t build others up. 1 Corinthians 10:23

Twice in his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul talks about the intersection of freedom and responsibility. Long before Enlightenment philosophers spoke about the autonomy of the individual, St. Paul recognized that while a person has the freedom to do whatever they want, not everything is necessarily a good idea. This is particularly true if one is in a covenant relationship with others.

Paul’s immediate context in making these statements is sexual behavior and eating meat sacrificed to idols, respectively, but he is also talking about a broad approach to one’s life.

I can go where I want, when I want, spend every cent in my bank account and pick up a lady for a one night stand. But if I want to stay married to my wife and be a part of my children’s lives, I’m going to choose not to do those things. They trust that I’m going to be responsible with our shared resources. They trust that I’m going to live by the values that we as a family have agreed on. I choose to be faithful to this covenant because that web of relationships is more important to me than acting on every impulse I might have.

I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful.

I have the right to buy a plane ticket and fly wherever I want without anyone asking why or wanting to see what’s in my luggage. I’ve never done anything that would make anyone suspect I had intentions to harm my fellow passengers or anyone else. But I take off my shoes and put my laptop in a separate bin in the security line, go through a metal detector or full-body scanner, and accept that someone from the TSA might mess up my nice, neat stack of undershirts. I gladly accept this because I value the safety of the general public more than I dislike the few minutes of inconvenience this causes me, even though I have done nothing to warrant such screenings.

I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful.

I have the right to buy a gun, and I have done nothing to suggest any ill intentions. But I consent to a background check because I value keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people more than I dislike having to wait a few days to complete my purchase. I have the right to buy an AR-15 assault rifle and hunt deer with it, but I choose to use a lower powered rifle with a smaller clip of ammunition because I value lowering the chance of someone walking into my children’s school and killing several dozen kids in a matter of seconds more than I value my right to squeeze off a hundred rounds a minute and feel like Rambo.

I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful.

At the core of many of the arguments opposing any gun control measures is the concept of “freedom.” I put that in quotes because it’s a word that means different things to different people. Some define freedom as “doing whatever I want whenever I want,” which I have just argued is not helpful for those who wish to be in covenant relationships with others.

The question becomes, is there a better definition of freedom? Christian theological tradition would say and emphatic “yes”.

Jürgen Moltmann sees the true definition of freedom in the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Holy Trinity. This relationship is summed up in the term perichoresis, which means mutual interdependence and indwelling. Moltmann sees God’s Trinitarian life as a model for human relationships of loving community: true freedom.

I am free and feel myself to be truly free when I am respected and recognized by others and when I for my part respect and recognize them. I become truly free when I open my life for other people and share with them, and when other people open their lives for me and share them with me. Then the other person is no longer the limitation of my freedom; he is the expansion of it. In mutual participation in life, individual people become free beyond the limits of their individuality, and discover the common room for living which their freedom offers. That is the social side of freedom. (The Trinity and the Kingdom, p. 216)

I willingly give others the space to feel free by agreeing to place a formal societal limitation on my “right” to own an assault weapon because, though I will not walk into a school and start shooting, other mentally disturbed people might. So for the good of the whole, I agree to a legal prohibition of certain guns and ammunition clips. This is the same reason I agree to speed limits, seat belt laws, and blood alcohol limits in the use of my car. This is the same reason I agree to only being able to purchase small amounts of certain cold medicines, so as to help stop the spread of meth.

We are not so naive as to believe that all of our fellow citizens will go along with these societal agreements. That is why we elect representatives who will pass laws to enforce these agreements for the good of the whole.

We do not naively assume such laws will guarantee there will never be another school shooting, any more than we assume there will never be another drunk driver or that meth labs will suddenly disappear. We do believe that such actions will reduce such incidences enough to help us be safer and closer to that true freedom whose full realization is yet to come.

I believe that this is a solid biblical and theological case for gun control laws. May we all open ourselves to the possibility of limiting certain individual liberties for the greater good and progress towards our true, God-given freedom.

ARTICLE: We Believe: Exploring the Apostles' Creed (Sermon Series with Free Graphics)

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 18:57:20 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

"We Believe” is a six-week sermon series exploring the Apostles’ Creed as a framework for Christian belief. The creed is not a checklist of things that one has to agree with in order to be a Christian. It is the place where we begin our conversation about what we believe God has done in Jesus Christ and what that means for the church and us as disciples in our own day and time.

Week 1- God
Genesis 1:1-5; 1 John 4:7-13

We affirm that God is the “creator of heaven and earth," and yet the way we articulate who God is to the world often communicates a vision that falls short of God’s greatness and ultimacy. Like the parable of the blind men feeling the elephant, each describing their own experience but making the mistake of assuming there can be no other experience or something beyond the reach of their senses, we, too, paint a picture of God that is far too small. We must recognize our own limitations and not be too quick to cram God into a box in the shape of our own prejudices or keep God on a shelf, to be taken down only when we need it.

Week 2- Jesus
Isaiah 43:1-7; John 1:1-14

How is it that Jesus can be fully God and fully human? Isn’t impossible to be 200%? We often think of those two things as being contradictory, separated by a wide gulf because of our sin. But God created human beings in God’s own image, and nothing can change that. The Word that was present with God from the beginning is able to be made flesh because our flesh was already made in that image. In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God shows us just how close we are to one another and demonstrates the full potential that God created in each of us.

Week 3- The Holy Spirit
Acts 3:1-10

After Jesus gave the Great Commission, died and returned, Jesus shared that He would be departing forever. The Holy Spirit, he said, the Counselor, could come and live with people forever, if they invite the Holy Spirit into their hearts. Peter, John and others had invited the Holy Spirit to live within and were able, by the power of the indwelling of Christs' Holy Spirit, to perform with boldness, miracles and healings. The people expressed amazement at the changes in the Apostles. Peter and others explained that if the people could profess their belief in Jesus Christ and confess their sins, then they could ask for and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit as well. The bold new style that Peter received as a gift from the Holy Spirit continues to encourage people to this day as people seek to live spirit-filled lives for Jesus Christ.

Week 4- The Church: the Communion of Saints
Acts 4:32-37 Matthew 28:16-20

The church is called together and empowered by Jesus to carry on his ministry in the world. We do this through our example of freely sharing all we have with whomever has need, just as the three persons of the Trinity fully share of themselves with one another. Through that example, we demonstrate that discipleship is a way of living, not merely giving assent to a certain set of ideas.

Week 5- The Forgiveness of Sins
Romans 5:12-21; Matthew 5:38-48

God offers us free grace and forgiveness that is beyond our ability to comprehend our grasp by our own power. We repent and begin to allow grace to change our life in response to the grace we have already been given. The person who truly grasps the depths to which they have been forgiven then extends it to others who may not understand their need for it or unwilling to repent, trusting that God’s grace will work through us and be made known to them.

Week 6- Resurrection and Life Everlasting
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Luke 24:36-49

The bodily resurrection of Jesus demonstrates that the ultimate power of our world, death, does not have the last word in creation. That last word belongs to God, who continues to redeem and shape this world to the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed.

ARTICLE: When "Some People" Complain

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:49:09 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Pastor Smith is winding down after a long day of ministry. Her first six months in her new church have had their challenges, but overall she feels like she’s being accepted by the congregation. She’s just settled down in the only comfortable chair in the parsonage and started reading a book by a theologian her seminary professors always raved about, the book she thought she’d have time to read once she graduated five years ago, when the phone rings.

It’s David, the lay leader at First Church. They spend a few minutes chatting about his kids, and he says some nice words about Pastor Smith’s sermon last Sunday, when David clears his throat and she knows they’re about to start a difficult conversation. “Look, Pastor Smith, you know I think you’re great, and a lot of other folks do, too. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the breath of fresh air our church really needs. The thing is, though, I’ve gotten some phone calls from some other members. And, well, there’s a general feeling that there is an area of concern or two...”

Pastor Smith is not real, and yet she is. She’s every pastor at one point or another. No one is in ministry for very long without having a conversation about comments someone heard from someone else. The names are rarely, if ever, attached to the comments. “Some people are concerned...” “There is a perception that...” The presenting issues are often vague, and they’re made to sound like they represent the consensus of the entire congregation. But do they? How should Pastor Smith respond to these concerns when she doesn’t even know who they come from or what specific thing has triggered them?

David the Lay Leader is trying to be helpful, but he’s engaging in a communication technique called “triangulation”. Just like triangle has three points, triangulation involves three parties. Person A has something to say to person B, but instead of drawing a line of communication directly between A and B, person A gets person C to pass the word along.

The concept of triangulation in interpersonal communication originated from psychologists who studied highly dysfunctional families. The only way for these families to become healthy was to break the cycle and deal with one another honestly and directly. Like a family system, when triangulation becomes the norm for communicating concerns, the church becomes a highly dysfunctional community where frustrations and resentments grow and little, if any, positive progress results.

Pastor Smith hangs up the phone very frustrated and discouraged. She knows David is a good person and was only trying to help, but she doesn’t know what to do with the issues he brought up. Who is unhappy with the way she does the pastoral prayer? What exactly is inappropriate about her use of humor in her sermons? How exactly can she be “more spiritual”? And didn’t the church say they wanted more young people? Why exactly is it a problem that she spends so much time with the youth?

The problem with triangulated, unattributed comments is that they offer no opportunity for dialogue. Pastor Smith is robbed of the possibility of having a deep pastoral conversation with whomever voiced the concern to the Lay Leader. She doesn’t get to use their concern as an opportunity to get to know them on a deeper level and find out what has motivated them to share their feelings in this way. She doesn’t get to consider the source. Is it Mr. Jones who always finds something to gripe about, or is it Mrs. Jennings, who never has a bad word to say about anything or anyone, and therefore a concern from her is something to take seriously? Are these David’s personal gripes, and he’s portraying them as the voice of the entire congregation? Pastor Smith wants to grow as a pastor, but these comments don’t help her know how!

In short, triangulated comments deny Pastor Smith the chance to be a pastor. They undermine her ministry and make the church an unhealthier place. When David the Lay Leader shares a concern in this way, he’s genuinely trying to make an uncomfortable situation as easy as possible, but in reality it has made things worse. Pastor Smith will likely sit in the chancel area and scan the congregation next Sunday, wondering who is talking about her behind her back, even as they smile and say, “nice to see you, pastor” on the way out.

What to Do

Before hanging up the phone, what Pastor Smith needs to do is not let David the Lay Leader off the hook so easily. She needs to insist on taking the opportunity to be the people’s pastor, even though it can be uncomfortable. She could say:

“Look, David, I appreciate you sharing these things with me, and I seek feedback so that I can be the best pastor I can be, the kind of pastor you deserve. But these generalities don’t afford me the opportunity to learn and grow. I need to know more about what exactly drives these comments. I need to know who they came from so I can have some conversations with these folks. Let’s dig deeper together so our relationship as pastor and church can be everything God wants it to be.”

Pastor Smith needs to be able to sit down with Mrs. Jennings in her living room over a cup of tea and get to know more about what concerns her about her pastoral prayers. She needs to be able to talk with Mr. Jones and tell him that, while she respects his opinion, she has to devote time to bringing in new members so that the church has a stable future. Perhaps she can even brainstorm with Mr. Jones some ways for the congregation to work together to care for the shut-ins that she doesn’t have as much time to see as she’d like.

If David the Lay Leader responds, “I really can’t say”, or “I don’t feel comfortable sharing who said that to me”, then Pastor Smith needs to firmly, lovingly say, “well, then I’m sorry, David, but I don’t really know what to do with such general, non-specific information, so we’re not really accomplishing anything here. Please ask those folks if they’re willing to put their name to their comments, otherwise there’s nothing I can do.”

These positive pastoral encounters are only possible if Pastor Smith pushes back against the triangulation and refuses to let unattributed concerns remain that way. Some momentary discomfort on the part of her and her Lay Leader can result in positive growth for her as a pastor and for the congregation as a family who truly trusts one another enough to “tell the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). But that will only happen if the pastor and key congregational leaders have the courage to remove the veil of anonymity, take the risk of being truly vulnerable with one another, and open themselves up for grace to transform them all, rewarding their risk.

May you have that type of grace-filled courage in your own congregation.

ARTICLE: Mission Trip High: Keeping it Going or Leaving it There?

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 17:29:48 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

I was recently visiting a mission camp where I had participated as both a youth and adult camper, and spent several summers on staff when I was in college. I had been invited to preside at Holy Communion for the camp’s Friday night worship, and I had the opportunity to witness campfire skits and community sharing where kids talk about what they’ve learned about God that week and what they’ll do different from now on.

I heard many of the types of responses one often hears at the close of mission trips. Several kids said this was their first real experience of God. Others talked openly about some real pain they had on their lives and the healing they were experiencing. One even said they were going to do everything differently once they got home, that God had done a “total 180 (degree turn) in my life.” It brought back memories of my first mission trip experiences many years ago and how they shaped my own faith journey and call to ministry.

Before the closing worship I was helping the staff set up, and one of the adult campers who was designated as a communion server and I began talking. He marveled at the change he’d seen in some of his youth during the week and said how valuable the experience was. But he also lamented how hard it was to “keep it going” once the youth group was back home. Once the kids were busy with sports, school and their social lives, once trips to the mall recommence, TV and the internet come back into the picture, and the influence of non-Christian friends again becomes a factor, the great missional spirit and effusive love for Jesus in the group during this week seems to die out.

“You’ve been at this for a long time,” the youth leader asked, “how do we keep this going back home?” Something about his question really struck me. Not that I hadn’t heard it before or asked it many times myself, but because I suddenly realized that this might not be the right question.

I politely identified with his frustration and said something about doing the best you could and finding mission opportunities near home to do throughout the year, but I really wish I could go back in time and simply say, “You can’t.”

Summer mission trips and Christian conferences, while very valuable, are fundamentally artificial environments, and it’s not fair of us to expect the effects of an artificial environment to last when conditions are entirely different.

Think of it like a science experiment, with controlled elements and variables. When we do events like summer mission trips, we take kids out of their normal environments, remove as many distractions and outside influences as possible, and we bombard them with Jesus for the entire time. We sing praise songs, sell Christian t-shirts and other products, and we preach to them about putting their faith at the center of their lives. The only variable is how each youth responds to the conditions of this environment we’ve created.

Of course they’re going to be enthusiastic and feel more committed to their faith than ever. That’s what we designed the environment to produce.

Mission trips and conferences have tremendous value. They provide opportunities for life changing decisions to be made, for relationships to be strengthened, and for substantive growth to occur. We shouldn’t stop doing these things. What needs to change is our expectations about what comes next.

Too often, youth come home floating a few inches off the ground on their “mission trip high.” They can’t wait to tell everyone in sight how much they love Jesus. But like any high—be it from an artificial environment or a controlled substance—it goes away.

Too often, youth leaders will take teenagers on a fall retreat and berate them for not “keeping it going” once they’ve gotten back home. “I saw such a great spirit right when we came back,” the speech goes, “but you all haven’t kept your promises to be different, you haven’t tended to your spiritual lives the way you said you would, and now look what’s happened.”

If the high becomes the goal, then we quickly become addicted and orient ourselves toward chasing the next high. It becomes a destructive cycle fueled by unrealistic expectations that ends up accomplishing the exact opposite of what we intend in taking people on mission trips and to conferences. We take them so that their lives will have some kind of difference when they get back home, not so they can be constantly chasing the next spiritual high.

What if, instead of pondering how to “take this back” or “keep it going” once we get home, we admitted to our youth that we’ve created an environment where it’s extremely easy to wear our faith on our sleeve (quite literally, if you bought the t-shirt), and that there will be some adjusting to do when they get home?

What if, instead of asking the blanket question “what will you do differently?” knowing very well that the answer many kids will give is “everything,” we asked kids to identify one thing they’d like to commit to changing with a measurable goal, and we checked in with them in the following weeks to see how it’s going? What if we encouraged the other kids on the mission team to help encourage each other and hold each other accountable in their goal?

What would happen if we changed our expectations from one mission trip or conference making a 180 degree turn in every kid’s life, and instead focused on incremental, 5 degree turns that will add up to big changes over a lifetime?

What would happen if we trusted God enough to carry us and our youth on a lifelong journey of sanctification?

If we adjust our expectations, our long term experience of mission trips and conferences might shift from frustration to joy.

BLOG: Context, Context, Context

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:01:36 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

I recently finished up a sermon series called "Living the Story," exploring each of the major "episodes" in the biblical narrative. (Listen to the series podcasts here.) We ended on June 24 by looking at the Book of Revelation in its historical context and pondering what it has to say to us as we are living out our own chapter in the great story of God and humanity.

One of the main points we emphasized is that all the books of the Bible were written to people in a specific time and place, so that the original audience could understand what the author was trying to say. If we approach scripture with no knowledge of who the first hearers (not readers, per say, as these were largely pre-literate societies) were, we won't have a clue what the author is trying to say and we'll end up reading some things that were never meant to be taken from the text.

Of course, God can and often does speak through these texts in fresh ways—that's why we call the Bible the "living Word of God," after all—but very often reading an ancient text with no historical and cultural context does more harm than good.

I listened to a sermon last week that illustrates this point beautifully. Pastor Ed Zeiders of St. Paul's UMC in State College, Penn., preached an amazingly pastoral and prophetic message on June 24, in the wake of recent events in their community.

As you are probably aware, Jerry Sandusky, a former football coach at Penn State and a member of St. Paul's, was convicted just days before on a long list of charges relating to the intentional and systematic sexual abuse of young boys over many years. This situation has profoundly affected their church and their community, as well as getting the attention of the rest of the world.

The thing is, though, if we didn't know anything about what had happened with Mr. Sandusky and the Penn State football program, this sermon wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to us. Rev. Zeiders never says "in light of Jerry Sandusky's sex abuse conviction," and instead uses words like "adversity," "challenge," and "a most peculiar place."

"Today we are living with the implications of something very important," Zeiders said at the beginning of his sermon. He does not have to spell things out for his congregation, because they are all well aware of the devastating and confusing circumstances weighing on their town.

Those of us listening to Zeiders' sermon by podcast aren't there in State College, of course, but living in the same time as these events (and watching them unfold in a 24-hour news media) makes it easy to know what he's talking about. But people a century or a millennium for now might not know what we know. The absence of this knowledge would put them at a serious disadvantage, and their conclusions might be helpful, or they might very likely do more harm than good. Without researching the context of June 2012 in State College, Penn., they might speculate that the "something very important" was a natural disaster, or the death of a beloved church member, or any number of things that might lead them to misapply the sermon's message to their own lives.

Take the time to listen to Pastor Ed's message, and bear in mind how you would be hearing this differently if you didn't know what was on everyone's mind that Sunday.

Knowing the context in which this sermon was preached is crucial to understanding what the pastor is trying to say. The same is true for all of us when we approach Holy Scripture. Let's have enough respect for the Bible to do a little homework and find out who these texts were written to. Let's take the time to see what was being proclaimed about God to the original audience, because that helps put us in a place where we are ready to hear what God wants to say to us through this text today.

BLOG: The Illusion of Pastoral Effectiveness

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:37:13 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

The acceptance of reality is always a liberation from the burden of illusion that we strive to justify by our errors and our sins. ~Seasons of Celebration, p. 116

What are the illusions in my life that I accept as reality?

Wow, if I were to be thorough, we'd go on all day and not even scratch the surface. I know I have lots of illusions about my life and the world around me that aren't true, and I'm quite certain that I don't even know what most of them are!

But the one that comes to mind first deals with my vocation as a pastor. It's an illusion called "pastoral effectiveness".

I'm in my first year at Arlington, and while I know this church and I are a very good fit for one another, I know the "honeymoon" period is still ongoing. We're still getting to know one another, and the newness of it all is exciting. That's not to say that bad things will start happening, but the reality of human relationships is that after you start getting used to someone, you start to notice more things that bug you.

Attendance and giving have generally been trending in positive directions, and people have had a lot of nice things to say about me (which I do not take for granted, because there have been times in ministry when it felt like I couldn't do anything right in a congregation's eyes). We're starting a new worship service soon, as well as exploring the possibility of some other new ministries to our community. People's attitude about the church is generally very positive and enthusiastic.

So the illusion I'm tempted to accept as reality is that all of these good things are the direct result of me being a very effective pastor, and to imply by silence that God has only had a marginal role.

This temptation is especially strong right now because I'm interviewing for full ordination in less than two weeks, and the benchmark the Board of Ordained Ministry sets is seeing that a person has demonstrated "effective ministry."

Pastors certainly do have a lot of influence over the way things go in their congregation. Their leadership can help things go in positive or negative directions. But like the President, Bishop, or any other leader, pastors get more credit than they deserve when things go well, and more blame than they deserve when things go poorly.

So if I draw pride from the illusion that the times when things are going well are all because of me, I set myself up to be absolutely destroyed when things don't go well, because I will believe others when they place the blame entirely on my shoulders.

The truth is that, like any other relationship, the pastor/congregation relationship is a two way street. There's a lot to be said for chemistry, and all parties in the relationship have the potential to bring out the best or the worst in one another.

I believe that my time with Arlington will be judged successful in the final analysis, at least by the metrics and standards that our denomination is emphasizing right now. But I want my real goal to be judged by God as having been faithful to my task and have lived with integrity to who God has created me to be.

But none of those things will happen if I allow myself to live with the illusion that everything lives and dies on "pastoral effectiveness". I play my part, but this is God's work. The times that I forget this, I get in big trouble.

This post is part of the author's series of Lenten reflections on Lent and Easter Wisdom from Thomas Merton. Read more at his blog, The Truth as Best I Know It.

BLOG: Loving Pagans and Tax Collectors

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:14:31 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

You may have read the story on Matthew Paul Turner's blog recently about a young man named Andrew who was part of Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church in Seattle (not to be confused with the church in Michigan that was, until recently, pastored by Rob Bell) who, when faced with a moral crisis, put his trust in his church and was treated horribly, under the pretense that such treatment is in accord with God's will. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 of Turner's posts about Andrew's ordeal and his "excommunication" from Mars Hill.

I want to offer my own take, not on Andrew's particular situation, or individuals like Driscoll or even churches like Mars Hill. Other bloggers like Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk, Rachel Held Evans, and a guest poster on Turner's blog named Stephen have already done so in more gracious and thoughtful ways than I would. Instead, I want to take a look at the "biblical basis" for Andrew's excommunication.

As the document in Part 2 on Turner's site says, the model for their actions is Matthew 18:15-18. In this passage, Jesus says

“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and correct them when you are alone together. If they listen to you, then you’ve won over your brother or sister. But if they won’t listen, take with you one or two others so that every word may be established by the mouth of two or three witnesses. But if they still won’t pay attention, report it to the church. If they won’t pay attention even to the church, treat them as you would a Gentile and tax collector. I assure you that whatever you fasten on earth will be fastened in heaven. And whatever you loosen on earth will be loosened in heaven." (CEB)

I've heard people who are on various places on the theological spectrum quote this passage, and focus in on the "treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector" part as a justification for shunning someone.

Since the words of Jesus are being used here, it follows that the actions of Jesus should tell us how one treats a pagan or a tax collector. How did Jesus treat these folks? Did he shun them and protect himself from them so as to not let their sinfulness infect him, as I've heard this passage applied?

No!

Jesus treated pagans and tax collectors, not to mention prostitutes, thieves, and all other kinds of "undesirables" with love and respect. He didn't just talk to them for the purpose of encouraging them to get their act together.

When he encountered Zacchaeus the tax collector (Luke 19:1-10), he didn't even wait for Zacchaeus to say a word before saying that he would dine with him. Zacchaeus' declaration of turning over a new leaf was in response to Jesus love. Grace came first, then repentance. But in the church we've flipped the equation around.

Let's also remember that Jesus' harshest words were reserved for the religious people that thought themselves too pious to associate with the common "sinner." He called them "broods of vipers," among other things. It was the religious people who wanted to exclude everyone they didn't approve of who conspired with the Romans to kill Jesus.

So if you find someone in a place where you think they're harming themselves and others through their sin, if you've talked with them about it and they disagreed, then you talked it through with others and the whole group talked to that person and they still disagreed, what does Jesus say you should do?

Keep loving them anyway. Don't shun them. Don't become so preoccupied with your own sanctity that you throw a relationship away over a disagreement. Love them. Eat with them. Show them that you'll never give up on them. That's what helps people understand that they're forgiven and that they can make a new start.

Perhaps if the church practiced more radically inclusive love and less superiority and exclusion under the guise of "church discipline," the rest of the world wouldn't find us to be so at odds with the Christ we worship.

ARTICLE: Giving It Up: A Sermon Series for Lent

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:29:31 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Many of us give up certain things for the forty days of Lent, and doing so can be a very beneficial thing for us. This seven-week series takes that idea one step further and talking each week about things that God wants us to give up, not just for forty days, but forever.

Giving Up Control

Feb. 26, 2012
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11
Adam and Eve disobeyed God, thinking that they knew better than him, with disastrous consequences. While being tempted in the wilderness, Jesus denied his own impulses and followed God's will. In the modern world, where we are used to having control over so many things, we often fail to seek God's will for our lives and try to call all the shots ourselves. God wants us to deny ourselves and give him the final say when we are charting out the course of our lives.

Giving Up Expectations

Mar. 4, 2012
Genesis 12:1-4a; John 3:1-17
Abraham followed God's call to leave his homeland and travel to the place God promised his descendants, even though he didn't know how it would all work out. When Nicodemus is talking to Jesus, he has a hard time understanding what God's grace is really about because he is used to thinking in terms of religious structure. Sometimes we just can’t know what’s going on or what’s coming next. God doesn't guarantee any future circumstances or uninterrupted prosperity, but we can trust that God will be with us through whatever circumstances we face and that God will work with us to make the best result out of even the most hopeless of places.

Giving Up Superiority

Mar. 11, 2012
John 4:5-42
Jesus broke all kinds of social conventions by speaking to a woman in public, a Samaritan no less, whose own life was such a mess that it could have really messed up Jesus' reputation as a holy man. But Jesus brought his message of grace and freedom to the woman, knowing that in her humility, she would actually hear and respond, while the religious people were too busy and self-important to hear. God doesn't care about any of the artificial lines we draw to make ourselves feel superior to others. If we let go of our status symbols and judgmental attitudes, we too can hear Jesus’ call more clearly and respond more faithfully.

Giving Up Enemies

Mar. 18, 2012
Luke 19:37-44
Loving our enemies can sometimes feel like as idealistic a notion as instantaneous world peace, but Jesus showed us that caring even for those who persecute you is a real, actionable mandate that we can carry out by following Jesus’ example. Peace isn’t just a far-off fantasy. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the people following him misunderstood his message to be about peace in Heaven instead of on Earth. We call Jesus the Prince of Peace, but do we really believe and live like peace is possible in our world today?

Giving Up Our Lives

Mar. 25, 2012
Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-45
God creates life from death, nothingness, and hopelessness. The Bible is full of such paradoxes, as Jesus tells us that those who try to keep their lives will die, but those who give up their lives for others will live. We are used to thinking of life in terms of fixed beginnings and ends, but the story of Jesus calls us to throw away our old categories and embrace God's larger vision of eternal life that begins here and now.

Giving Up Popularity

Apr. 1 (Palm Sunday)
Matthew 21:1-11
What a welcome Jesus got as he entered Jerusalem. “Hosanna!” the people cried, hailing him as an honored king. The crowds loved Jesus on Palm Sunday, but just a few days later a different crowd was calling for his death and the release of a murderer. Popularity and acclaim in the eyes of others is fleeting, and if we put all our faith in it we will be very disappointed. Instead, God calls us to put our faith in God's unending love and grace- something that will never go away, and will sustain us through the times when others have abandoned us.

Giving Up Death

Apr. 8 (Easter Sunday)
Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18
Jesus’ rising on Easter morning was more than a showy miracle to shock and awe his attackers and followers. When Jesus rose, he turned the entire order of the universe on its head. The Resurrection shows us that Death does not have the last word. God has the last word, and that word is Life. Suffering and Death end, but God's Kingdom lasts forever.

ARTICLE: Reign of Christ Sunday

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:02:39 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Celebrating the Reign of Christ Sunday marks the end of Ordinary Time and serves as a prologue to the festivities of Advent. We celebrate Christ's role as Lord of all—the world, the church, and our lives. Thinking about the ways we know and experience Christ for ourselves, I was struck earlier this year when my Anglican friends observed the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. It’s interesting that these two titans of the early church would share a feast day because of the radically different way they each experienced and understood Christ. It is these differences that illustrate for us the inherent complexity of Reign of Christ Sunday, when we remind ourselves, once again, that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Peter knew the human Jesus first; and through his experiences walking with, learning from, and participating in Jesus’ ministry, he came to know him as the Christ. In the Synoptic Gospels, we are told that Peter was out fishing one day with his brother, Andrew, and Jesus called out to them, prompting the brothers to drop their nets and begin following Jesus (Matthew 4:18-20). John’s Gospel suggests that since Andrew was a follower of John the Baptist, Peter knew at least a little bit about Jesus before dropping everything to follow him (John 1:41). But it was Peter’s experiences of watching Jesus preach, teach, and heal that led him to proclaim “you are the Christ, the anointed one of God” (Matthew 16:16 NIV).

Peter observed Jesus as a human being. He saw Jesus yawn when he got tired. He saw Jesus flinch when he hit his foot on a stone. Peter even saw the vein on Jesus’ forehead swell up in anger just before he lashed out at the money changers in the temple courtyard. So even after the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, even after Peter began to understand the cosmic significance of what God had done through this man, at the end of the day, Peter’s loyalty to Christ was rooted in his best friend, Jesus, a man with whom he’d laughed, cried, walked miles, and eaten hundreds of meals.

Paul, however, never knew the human Jesus. He heard all the stories about all that Jesus did and said from guys like Peter, but only after he was a committed Christian. Paul started out as Saul of Tarsus, a bright and zealous Pharisee who was determined to see this heretical movement called “The Way” wiped out. But God had other plans for him. On the way to Damascus to continue his grand inquisition, Paul was struck blind by Jesus and told to go wait for further instructions (Acts 9). He was baptized, took the name Paul, and spent the rest of his life traveling the Roman Empire, spreading the gospel—to Jews and Gentiles alike. Oh, and he wrote a big chunk of the New Testament in his free time.

Paul knew the cosmic Christ: the risen Jesus to whom all authority on heaven and earth had been given. While Peter went around telling stories about the time Jesus performed this miracle or told that parable, Paul went around speaking in high-minded philosophical rhetoric. He mined the Old Testament for metaphors to describe how God’s wondrous purposes were being fulfilled and the salvation of the whole world was affected through this one of whom God had raised to life in anticipation of the future resurrection of all people. Paul’s image was Jesus was that of the divine, cosmic redeemer who was drawing the whole of creation to himself.

In other words, you could say that although both Peter and Paul saw Jesus Christ as “fully human, fully God” (a statement issued by the Council of Nicea three centuries later but consistent with the beliefs of the early church), Peter leaned toward the “fully human” part, while Paul leaned toward the “fully God part.”

There’s no question this creates tension. We can’t even begin to wrap our minds around the idea that someone could be both fully God and fully human. We can only stand in wonder and awe at how amazing Jesus is to be able to fully embody both of these seemingly contradictory things. And that’s the entire point of celebrating Reign of Christ Sunday. We are entering into the expectation of Advent and anticipating the in-breaking of heaven to earth. We recall how time and again we fail to live up to the ways God calls us to be, and yet God never withdraws his grace.

On Reign of Christ Sunday, we celebrate that God’s reign in the entire universe has already been accomplished. At the same time, we anticipate the day when that reign will be accomplished in every human heart. Just as Peter and Paul illustrate the divine/human tension of Jesus’ person, on Reign of Christ Sunday, we remind ourselves of the already/not-yet tension of God’s reign over all creation. We pray, as Jesus taught us, “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: Jesus Everywhere

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:22:24 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Scriptures for November 20: Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

Reign of Christ Sunday is the final Sunday before the beginning of Advent, and thus the new lectionary year. So perhaps it’s fitting to cap off Year A with one of the most direct and challenging passages in the gospel, if not in the whole Bible.

Most of the time when we talk about Jesus reigning in our lives, we talk about it in terms of individual, personal salvation. “Have you, as an individual, accepted Jesus?” we ask. I’ve seen a tract illustrating the two types of lives one can lead: one drawing had the individual sitting on the throne of his or her life, the other had Jesus on the throne and the person bowing down. All you had to do to move from the former to the latter was pray a prayer. It was as simple as that!

The thing is, though, that this is hardly the biblical picture of what it is to have Jesus reigning in our lives. When Jesus talks about how the sheep and the goats will be separated out in the final judgment, he doesn’t tell the sheep they prayed the right prayer, and the goats that they drank too much and watched too many R-rated movies.

The essential difference between the sheep and the goats is the care they showed for other people, especially those the world considers “the least of these.” How did they react when they saw those to whom they owed nothing, according to the world’s standards? Did they step over the homeless person and tell them to get a job? Did they tell the person dying of AIDS that they were paying the price for their sins? Did they insist that those in jail deserved to live in cruel and inhumane conditions because of their crimes? Or did they look at each of these people and see not a drag on society or someone who hadn’t made something of themselves, but a precious child of God in need of care and compassion?

Whenever someone preaches about Matthew 25 as if it is Jesus’ actual criteria for being a Christian, most Protestants get nervous because it starts to sound like works righteousness. It kind of sounds like we’re saying that you can earn your way into Heaven with enough good works. It can be very easy to sound that way, but it misses the essential point of what Jesus is talking about.

For a moment let’s set aside the “eternal fire” and “eternal punishment” language and assume for a moment that Heaven and Hell are not the issues here (even though they may well be). The sheep are receiving their reward because they have been participating in the reality of the Kingdom of God all along. They have lived by the rules of the Kingdom that says that no one is beneath anyone else, and that everyone gets a seat at the table. So now that this Kingdom of God is fully consummated, they are able to fully see that in which they have trusted even though the rest of the world has been operating by a different set of rules. The goats, on the other hand, are so fully committed to the system that has been phased out, their lives are so oriented around the idea of scarcity and endless consumption that living in a Kingdom where the rules are fundamentally at odds with what they’re used to that they’re miserable. In other words, Heaven is wonderful for the sheep, but it’s hellish for the goats.

On Reign of Christ Sunday, as on most Sundays, there are lots of churches that end their services with invitations to come up to the front and accept Jesus in to your heart, to let Christ reign in your life. If your church is one of those churches, consider setting that aside for this one Sunday. Instead of inviting people forward to accept Jesus, invite them to head out the door and look for Jesus everywhere they go. Is Jesus holding a cardboard sign by the freeway exit? Is Jesus all alone in a run down nursing home? Is Jesus right in front of their face, but they’ve grown so desensitized that they stare straight through him?

If Christ really does reign in our hearts, then let us go out to love him and serve him wherever he may be.

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: Using Our Talents

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:16:18 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Scriptures for November 13: Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

I’ve always been kind of uneasy with the parable of the talents. It seems like the third servant got a raw deal. After all, it’s not like the man who went away for a long time gave them specific instructions, he just told the servants to look after the funds. It could be that the other two servants were generally more crafty people than the other one. Or maybe they were a little more educated and had taken Economics 101 while the third guy was out working the fields. Regardless, Jesus has a clear point in telling it: the gifts and graces you posses come from God, and God expects you to do something with them.

As a pastor I often talk with younger people about the direction they want to take with their lives. They often say things like, “I can’t tell if God’s calling me to be this or that. I think I have talents for both and do well at a number of things. What should I do?” Our talents and our passions are certainly a major clue to what God wants us to do with our lives. But too often we think of our calling in terms of the destination as opposed to the journey.

The question of how God is calling us to use our gifts and talents is not whether God has decided that we should be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher, or even a pastor. The question is how would any of these vocations allow us to live out the gifts and graces God has given us? Are these venues the best way for us to live out the type of person God has called us to be? Our calling lies in the journey, of which the destination is a part, but certainly not the whole.

I’d like to think that if the third servant, who wasn’t given nearly as many resources as his colleagues, had tried to do something with what he was given and hadn’t made the money back, the man would have given him credit for at least giving it a shot. Sometimes we go forward with our best efforts and best intentions and we fail. Maybe it’s because we didn’t prepare properly or we didn’t fully know what we were doing. Then again, maybe it just wasn’t our day. But if Jesus’ point in telling this parable is that God expects us to do our best with what God has given us, than the amount (monetary or otherwise) we are able to produce with it should be a concern secondary to the fact that we gave it our best shot. If our actions, and more importantly, our hearts, show that we truly recognize and are thankful for our God given gifts, then we won’t hesitate to go out and boldly use them for God’s glory and the ultimate benefit of God’s kingdom here on earth.

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: Eyes Wide Open

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:09:32 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Scriptures for November 6: Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

One of the many things my dad taught me was to appreciate the stories of Sherlock Holmes, the “Great Detective” of Victorian England. Sherlock Holmes isn’t a hero because he’s stronger or faster than anybody else, or even because he’s necessarily smarter. He’s a hero because he’s able to notice things that everyone else overlooks. He was the original CSI before all the cool technologies we see on the TV shows. In one story he begins tracking down a criminal by looking at the hoof-prints from the getaway horse and noticing a particular pattern left by custom horseshoes. He notices these little details because he keeps his eyes open all the time and is always aware that things are not always what they seem.

Several of the lectionary texts this week are strong exhortations to keep our eyes open and not assume too much about the world around us. These texts are often misunderstood because we in the 21st century fail to understand the first century audience to whom these texts were written. 1 Thessalonians is likely the earliest of Paul’s pastoral letters that we have today. As such, they reflect very different attitudes about the future than do some of his later letters, like those he wrote to Timothy from prison in Rome. Paul, like many first generation Christians, believed that the end of the world was coming very soon, so there were some people who were worried that those in the church who died before the eschaton would not be part of God’s coming reign. Some people who read this passage today believe it refers to an immanent rapture before an outpouring of God’s wrath (the interpretation represented in the popular Left Behind books), but all Paul was doing was reassuring his people that no one, not even those who had died, were excluded from God’s Kingdom. Instead of worrying, he encouraged them to be ready and watchful for whatever God might do in the future. We see Jesus preaching the same essential message in the parable from Matthew’s gospel: be ready and watchful for whatever God might be doing.

As we enter the holiday season, everyone starts getting busy—making travel plans, buying gifts, cooking meals, decorating, etc. There’s not enough time to do it all! In the midst of all the busyness of this time of year, one of the best things we can do for ourselves, and for each other, is to take time to sit back and observe our surroundings. Is everything exactly what we assume it to be? Or could God be using something in our everyday circumstances to call out to us and remind us about what is really important? Could God be whispering in a still, small voice? We’ll only know if we take the time to watch and listen.

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: All Saints Day

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:05:38 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Scriptures for All Saints Day: Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

M.C. Escher is one of my favorite artists. He’s the guy who did the pencil drawings featuring things like two hands drawing each other and a set of stairs that endlessly cycled back upon itself. Escher is great because you can’t just glance at his work for a moment and get it. It compels you to stare at it for a long time, wondering if your eyes are playing tricks on you, and marvel at the imagination it must take to even think of things like this, which are impossible in real life. His art forces us to stretch the bounds of our understanding and reconsider what really is possible.

I wonder if hearing Jesus speak had a similar effect on people. In first century Palestine, everybody understood how the world worked. Might made right. They were living under the Roman Empire, after all. The Romans got to rule most of the known world because they had the biggest military, the most money, and were willing to do whatever it took to secure their power base. The amount of resources in the world was finite, so you did whatever you had to do to make sure you got as big a share as you could. But here’s this preacher from Nazareth telling an entirely different story.

Here’s Jesus saying that things like meekness, being persecuted, and being merciful in a merciless world are actually blessings from God! This is Jesus’ first recorded teaching in Matthew’s gospel, and it sets the tone for his ministry as described in all four gospels. Jesus is forcing us to radically rethink the priorities and value systems around which we orient our lives. On the one hand there’s the story told by the empire (the ruling powers of the world) that says that the material realities of this life are the entirety of all creation, so material gain and success are the stick by which we measure individual worth. On the other hand, there’s the story that Jesus is telling, which tells us there is a higher reality than what we can perceive with our five senses, and that this higher reality and the priorities that flow out of its being are to dictate how we live our lives in the world.

Jesus didn’t just tell this story, he lived it out. He spent time with those who were considered outcasts by the world, and even by the religious system. He taught, ate with, and healed all people, regardless of where they fell in the societal class structure. Jesus forced the people of his day—and us as well—to consider a different story, a different understanding of what was really possible, and to consider that all they had ever known, or could know, might not be all there is.

This Sunday, we are celebrating All Saints, where we remember those who have passed from this life who have chosen to orient their lives around the story of Jesus as opposed to the stories offered in this world. A passage from Revelation makes a rare appearance in the lectionary cycle, and in it we find that those who get special recognition in the Kingdom are those who have chosen to orient their lives around the story of Jesus, and as a consequence have “come out of the great ordeal,” paying a heavy price for living by a different story than the rulers of the world.

Texts like this are often used to condemn those outside of the Christian faith and reinforce the desire to feel superior to others, saying “they’ll get theirs in the end!” While Revelation was written to people experiencing heavy persecution, and they undoubtedly felt comforted by the promise of future public justification, John is not trying to say that one group will end up being favored over another. That’s just a Christianized version of the world’s story. Instead, this text is trying to give comfort to those who have become so weary from walking this difficult road that Jesus calls us to that they begin to think that switching over to the world’s story would just be easier. And maybe it would be. But the example of the countless saints over the years who have chosen the story of Jesus over the story of the world, and ultimately have left the world a much better place than they found it, have shown us that the more difficult road, the one with the delayed rewards, is ultimately the better one.

BLOG: Eight Weeks on Romans

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:07:04 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Paul’s epistle to the Romans occupies much of the lectionary this summer (Year A, from the second Sunday after Pentecost through the thirteenth), so while I’ve focused on various texts for the first half of the summer, I'm going to be preaching on Romans for eight weeks, through August and September. This series might be described as “lectionary-inspired,” though the texts I’ll be preaching on each week do not correspond with the exact lectionary schedule (which moves on from Romans after Sept. 11). I'll be covering roughly two chapters a week, although we won't be reading the entire text aloud in worship.

As I planned, I looked for an overarching theme in Romans (one that was more creative than the old “Romans Road.” That’s just shallow proof-texting, and we’re going to be diving deeper than that.) I read and brainstormed, and even started some lively discussions on my blog, which sparked some on a few other blogs. What did I discover from all that discussion?

The theme of Romans is not quite that easy to pin down.

As I’ve reflected more on what should be the overarching theme for a sermon series on Romans, it’s occurred to me that the concept of there being a thesis around which Romans is wrapped is a very modern one. Paul’s epistle is not a work of systematic theology, so we can't read it like we do Aquinas or Barth. In fact, I suspect that if Paul was a divinity school student, his “Romans” term paper would not get a very good grade.

Instead, Paul is writing very much a stream of consciousness, addressing the problems in the Roman Christian community as he understands them. So while the question of a central thesis is one that I don't really think Romans is trying to answer, I do think there are some ideas that keep coming up in Paul's writings that reflect what he thought was most important about being a follower of Jesus.

As the “apostle to the Gentiles,” Paul spent a lot of time thinking and arguing with others about just what new thing God was doing in Jesus. Paul did not cease to be Jewish, and thus probably didn't see Christianity as a separate religion the way we do today, but neither did he believe that one had to go through all the steps of conversion to Judaism, such as circumcision, to be part of this new thing God was doing. So as hyper-critical as Paul can be of others whose ideas or practices he disagrees with, Paul’s vision of what God is doing is radically inclusive for his time.

So, all that being said, the theme for our series exploring the Book of Romans is “Grace is for Everybody.” We will be focusing on the radically inclusive, barrier-breaking nature of God’s grace. The schedule for this 8-week series follows.

Aug 7: I’m a sinner, You’re a sinner (Rom. 1:18-23; 2:1-6)

Aug 14: Righteousness by Faith (Rom. 3:21-31)

Aug 21: Law and Grace (Rom. 6:1-4, 15-23)

Aug 28: Nothing Can Separate Us (Rom. 7:15-20; 8:31-39)

Sept 4: Branches Grafted On (Rom. 11:1-2a, 13-24)

Sept 11: The Renewed Creation (Rom. 12:9-21)

Sept 18: Different Needs, One Lord (Rom. 14:1-8)

Sept 25: What We’ve Learned (Romans 15:14-22)

The author will be blogging through the series at The Truth As Best I Know It, so follow along to gain insight and/or give your input on each week's text.

ARTICLE: The Christmas Story in First Person

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 18:56:42 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

There is an old saying, “Christmas comes but once a year." For children, this is a phrase of disappointment, reminding them that the season of decorations, carols, sweets, and presents only happens once a year, and that there is a very long time in between.

For preachers, this saying might be modified: “Christmas comes around every. darn. year!” After you’ve been preaching a few years, annual occurrences like Christmas and Easter can become a challenge because it can be difficult to think of something new and interesting to say. The essential message remains the same of course, that God has reconciled the world to himself in the person of Jesus Christ. But finding a fresh way to proclaim that good news in an engaging way so that it will be heard and people will respond is not an easy task!

Let’s consider for a moment how we normally tell biblical stories: in the third person, past tense. Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem where Jesus was born, and then we unpack what this ancient story means for us today. So to do something new and interesting, let’s consider changing the tense in which we tell the story. Instead of third person, past tense, let’s tell the story in the first person, present tense. In the moment of proclamation, let’s hand the mic to the characters in the story and tell people how they saw these events.

Through these monologues--presented one per week in the weeks leading up to Christmas or combined into a multi-person drama--the congregation can gain a new perspective on the Christmas story. The scripts (which can be downloaded below) are monologues from the perspective of Mary, Joseph, and a shepherd, but your group could write monologues for Elizabeth or the Innkeeper as well.

Writing the Scripts

Don’t worry if you’re not an actor. If your church has a drama ministry, that would be the natural place to start. If not, you may have some youth who would be game to try something new and different. Whatever ministry context you’re in, first person, dramatic proclamation can be a great way to get others involved in the preparation and delivery of the message. (If you want to know more about the process of collaborative preaching overall, check out this article on the topic.)

Since most biblical stories don’t say much about what the characters were feeling, this requires some creative thinking. If you have a group getting together to collaborate on brainstorming or writing the sermon script, read the story and ponder a few questions together (some of these may involve some prior research on your part to help kickstart the conversation).

Questions might include:

What do we know about this particular character’s background?
What kind of family did he or she come from?
What kind of work did he or she do?
What was the society he or she lived in like?
An encounter with God often caused radical change in someone’s life, and usually made things a lot more complicated, so how did those problems make the character feel? How did he or she process them and go about facing this new reality in life?
What hopes and fears would the character carry into the future?

Let’s use Mary in the Nativity story as an example. We know that she lived in Nazareth, which was a fairly small town, and more than likely came from a normal, traditional Judean family. As was the practice at the time, her engagement to Joseph was arranged by her family, with her father and Joseph negotiating a bride price and a dowry. Mary would likely be in her early to mid teenage years, and Joseph would likely be a bit older than her. Being in a very traditional society, suddenly becoming pregnant during your engagement would be a major embarrassment both to Mary's family and to Joseph, so while Mary agreed to do what God wanted her to do, she’s probably also very scared of how people will react. She may wonder what Joseph will do and how she will provide for the child if he won’t marry her and she is a disgraced woman.

Given this background, now the group can start composing Mary's story as she might tell it to someone who had never heard it. By going through a group process in putting the first person proclamation together, you’ve not only given one small group of people a chance to reflect on and deeply engage the biblical story, you’ve also put together a fresh presentation of the biblical narrative that will entertain and enlighten the audience, helping them experience the biblical characters as real human beings who faced real struggles just like we do.

Remember, Christmas comes around every single year. Don’t be afraid to take a new approach to telling an old, old story.

BLOG: A Prejudice I Didn't Know I Had

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 14:51:45 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

I have prejudices. We all do. Unlike Stephen Colbert, we see things like race, gender, clothing, body size/type, etc, and we automatically make assumptions about people based on our previous experiences of people with similar characteristics. Sometimes these snap judgments are correct, sometimes they're not, but we all make them. I've come to believe the key to not letting these things control us is to acknowledge they're there so we can get to know a person, and perhaps have those snap judgments proven wrong. Prejudices are only dangerous when we don't realize that they're there.

So I was surprised recently to discover that I had a prejudice I didn't even know was there. One of the things that I love about Arlington is that we have a food pantry that is open every weekday. When I'm in the office, I try very hard to go out and talk with the folks that are coming for food assistance, and I've found myself being very surprised at who is coming.

Some of the folks coming to the food pantry have the "homeless look" (a very bad stereotype we need to purge from our culture): shabby clothes, haven't showered in a while, etc. But a surprising number of folks coming for assistance don't look like they're homeless or even poor. They're not someone that you'd pass on the street and think that they didn't have enough to eat.

Thankfully, I've been smart/lucky enough to keep my mouth shut and not say something stupid about them not looking like they need help or question the sincerity of their needs. I've seen the statistics about how many people in our country don't have enough to eat, but I think I understand them now in a different way. We pass people every day who don't have the basic necessities of life, and most of the time we don't bother to notice that someone is suffering right before our eyes.

I was reminded of this again not long after when I was driving home and saw a vendor selling The Contributor at an intersection. (The Contributor is a newspaper sold by homeless people in Nashville who are trained and assigned a "zone" where they can sell the paper as a way to make money other than begging.)

I have friends who are very involved with The Contributor and other homeless ministries here, and I've heard them complain when people won't buy a paper from a vendor because they don't "look homeless." The reason they don't have the "look" is because selling the paper has enabled them to have enough money to get a place to stay and begin to build a life off the streets. The reason many of the vendors don't "look homeless" is because The Contributor is succeeding at getting people off the streets!

All of this reminded me that we don't know what is going on with somebody by their outward appearance. Someone who doesn't appear poor or homeless might still be in need of assistance. Someone who looks like they have their whole life figured out might falling apart inside, just waiting for you or I to ask how it is with their soul. Poverty, be it economic, emotional, or spiritual, is all around us, even if we don't see it on the surface.

I'm grateful to my new church and my city for helping me see a prejudice I didn't even know I had.

ARTICLE: Praising America More than God

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:48:22 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

With the U.S. Independence Day holiday coming up, many churches will be holding patriotic worship services extolling the virtues of the nation. However, other congregations and pastors struggle with what kind of relationship the church should have with the nation. How should we acknowledge our gratitude to a country that allows us to worship freely without fear of persecution or censorship without abandoning our prophetic call to proclaim God’s kingdom on earth? There is no easy answer, and every situation is unique, so let me share about how it came up in my ministerial context one time.

I was the pastor of a church in a town with a very large army base, and the military pervaded the culture of the community. A member of my congregation called me up and said that a gospel singer he knew was going to be in our area and wondered if he could sing at our church on Sunday. I said that would be fine and that he could perform two or three songs as special music. I spoke with the singer later that day and told him what the scriptures and sermon would be about that day, and he said he would choose songs that would compliment the theme of the worship service.

This was the first Sunday in Lent, and no national holidays were anywhere close on the calendar, so what he did surprised me. At the end of his set of southern gospel hymns, he sang Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American," which includes the lyric “God bless the USA," but otherwise makes no mention of God and is certainly not a hymn. Perhaps this makes me somewhat liturgically conservative, but I believe that every element of the worship service should direct our focus to the praise and worship of God, so I felt that this song had no place in the time of worship since it primarily exalts the nation.

I was sitting in the back of the sanctuary with my wife during his performance, and when the singer began that song, I covered my eyes with my hand, muttering, “you’ve got to be kidding me." A moment later my wife elbowed me in the ribs and made me look up, seeing that the entire congregation was standing, most of them with their hands over their hearts, and at the end of the song they gave the longest and loudest ovation I’d ever heard them do in four years as their pastor. I was too stunned to begin to know what to do. I thanked the singer, pronounced the benediction, and went home to get over my shock.

This was a delicate situation. As I said before, I thought the song had no place in the worship service since it glorified the nation instead of God, but I had to address it very carefully since my church was in a military town and nearly every family had at least one person who was either active duty or retired military. Many of them had risked their lives in service to our country and were extremely sensitive to any criticism, real or perceived, of that service. How could I address this issue in a pastorally sensitive and compassionate way without compromising my prophetic voice?

As it happened, this was during the season of Lent, and this year I was preaching a series of sermons called “Why They Killed Jesus," in response to comments from several congregation members that they didn’t understand why Jesus made people in his time so angry they wanted to kill him. In this series we made sure to heavily emphasize that “they” in this context were the political and religious elite in first century Judea, not “the Jews” as a whole group of people. When I looked at the text for the following week, I saw that we had decided on Mark 12:13-17, where Jesus responds to a question about paying taxes with “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give God what is God’s”. The tentative title of the message was “Jesus Challenges the Political System” (read the full text of this sermon here). Now I had a very relevant sermon illustration!

I decided to explore the passage by looking at the question in the way I’ve heard Will Willimon and others do: if we are to give Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s, then we have to know what things belong to each of them. Since God is the creator, sustainer, and animator of all things, we can confidently say that everything ultimately belongs to God, and the power Caesar or any other earthly ruler holds is temporary. I then turned to the example of the previous week’s service where the most emotional and enthusiastic act of praise was directed at the nation instead of toward God and challenged the congregation to ask if we might have accidentally given our best to something that is less than God.

I was extremely anxious about preaching this sermon, afraid that people would be offended, but I knew I couldn’t let that fear keep me from posing the crucial gospel question of where our true loyalties lie. After the service, I was surprised at some of the comments I got. Several people expressed that they had felt uncomfortable standing for that song, that they too were unsure that it was appropriate for a worship service, but that they went along with the crowd. Another agreed that it was an uncomfortable question, but they appreciated being challenged in a respectful way.

Holidays such as Independence Day arouse strong emotions of loyalty to the nation, and challenging people to evaluate where their true loyalties lie is never easy. The truth is that there is no way to preach that kind of prophetic message without someone getting offended. But if you know your audience and can speak a prophetic message in such a way that they will hear and be more likely to respond, you will have been both prophetic and pastoral in your ministry to them.

ARTICLE: Jesus Challenges the Political System

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:00:11 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

A Sermon on Mark 12:13-17, part of a Lenten series entitled "Why They Killed Jesus."

“Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. And give unto God what is God’s.” There is perhaps no saying of Jesus, maybe even no verse in the Bible that is so ambiguous and at the same time so powerful that it comes loaded with unbelievably different interpretations. It is perhaps simultaneously the best known and the least understood saying of Jesus. Now, I could stand here today and tell you that I’m going to explain once and for all what Jesus really means, but the truth is that there are many ways of going at this and none of them has been so clearly correct, none so obviously authoritative as to truly settle the debate.

“Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. And give unto God what is God’s.” It’s not clear at all what Jesus is saying. The good thing, though, is that this saying occurs in a story that happens in a specific time and place. So looking at the context in which the story occurs gives us some insight.

In Mark’s version of Jesus’ story, we’re in Jerusalem some time in the last week of Jesus’ life. He’s ridden into town on a donkey, and he’s been making quite a scene ever since. Jerusalem is already on edge because thousands of pilgrims have come to observe the Passover, and the Romans have sent extra soldiers from Caesarea to keep order. This is the perfect time for a riot to break out, and the religious and political leaders think that this Jesus fellow just might be dangerous.

So here we see two unlikely groups joining forces to try to trap Jesus: the Pharisees and the Herodians. The Pharisees are the scholars and teachers of the scriptures; they’re the learned holy men who have some pretty specific ideas about what is right and what is wrong. So it’s strange that the Pharisees are joining forces with the Herodians—the people who support King Herod. Herod is the puppet king that the Romans installed so the Judeans would think that they ran their own show. These two groups don’t like each other at all. But Jesus is clearly a threat to both of them and clearly they’re both more interested in preserving the status quo that lets them be powerful. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as the saying goes, so this unlikely duo goes to try to trap Jesus any way they can.

“Teacher,” they say, “we know you are a man of integrity.” They don’t actually believe this, by the way, they’re just trying to flatter him so he won’t notice what they’re trying to do. “Jesus, you’re such a good, smart, all around wonderful guy (by the way, did we mention how handsome you are?), so we’d like your help with a question. We’re wondering, Jesus, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
They’re trying to trap him. If he says yes, he’s saying to go along with these awful Romans, so he’s a sellout who’s as bad as Herod. Don’t listen to this man! He doesn’t believe the Bible! On the other hand, if he says no, don’t pay taxes to Caesar, well then he’s a rebel! He’s advocating chaos and disorder. Don’t listen to this man or the Romans will crucify you right next to him!

Quite a dilemma Jesus is in here. But Jesus is a smart guy, he knows that there’s no good answer, so he turns the question around on them. “Give me a coin,” he says. There are two different types of currency in circulation at this time. One type is the Roman currency, and it’s a lot like our coins today. It has a picture of the Roman Emperor on it, kind of like our quarter has George Washington. This currency is good all over the Empire, it works really well, and everyone’s happy. Everyone, that is, except the Jews. The Jews have this law where their God tells them not to make any graven images, no physical depictions of any divine figure because it reduces God to an object. You may recall that this is one of the Ten Commandments—it’s a biggie. Since the Roman Caesar is viewed as a divine figure, an image of him on a coin is therefore a graven image. Hence, Jews can’t even handle these coins without breaking the Law and being ritually unclean. They have a different currency they use that doesn’t have anyone’s image on it, so it’s clean, it’s kosher.

Two types of currency: one with Caesar’s graven image, one without. Which coin do they hand to Jesus? Whose image is on this coin? Caesar’s. Jesus has turned the question around on them and asked them to perform an action that shows where their loyalty really lies. For a Jewish person, this was an area where they couldn’t be both a good citizen of the empire and a faithful follower of God. This was where they had to choose and these guys chose to throw their lot in with Caesar. They made the politically expedient choice and chose Caesar over God.

Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give unto God what is God’s. That very phrase poses an interesting question. If we are to give to these two entities what belongs to them, we have to know what belongs to each. So let’s consider, who created all the land on earth, even all the land that comprises the Roman Empire? God did. Who created all the elements in the earth, including the metals that are used to make these coins? God did. Who gave human beings the ability to learn and fashion tools to mine these metals out of the ground, who gave them the ability to experiment and create processes to melt these metals down and mint them into coins? God did. Who created each and every human being and gives them each breath they take, who created every citizen of this empire? God did. Who is ruler of the universe long before and long after every government comes and goes from the face of the earth? God is. The psalmist tells us that “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” So what belongs to God? Everything. What belongs to Caesar? Nothing. So give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and give unto God what is God’s.

Now, of course, we don’t live under Roman occupation, so the choice facing us isn’t exactly the same as that faced by Jesus and his peers. We use coins with someone’s face on them, but no one claims that George Washington or Abraham Lincoln are somehow divine, so we don’t have to worry about graven images on our money. But just like the people of Jesus’ time, we face a host of difficult choices every day. We come in contact with all kinds of things that demand our allegiance, that tell us that they have to be our first priority. In our own time the great theologian Paul Tillich talked about faith as “the state of being ultimately concerned with something.” Our ultimate concern is the thing that owns our first loyalty, it’s the thing around which we orient all our decisions. Our ultimate concern is the thing we’d die for. According to Tillich, everyone has faith because everyone has an object of ultimate concern, it’s just a question of what it is. Tillich’s question is more or less a version of the question Jesus poses: to what or whom are we loyal? What do we really put our faith in?

This isn’t an easy question to answer, because there are plenty of things we can be loyal to that don’t conflict with each other most of the time. Our jobs, our hobbies, our families: most of the time these things don’t conflict with our faith. The question is not whether we can participate in different things. The question is: where does our ultimate loyalty lie? What is the absolute most important thing? And when we take a long, hard look at ourselves, will we discover that we have given the absolute best of what we are to something that is much less than God?

Again, this is a hard question to answer, because we rarely have just one motivation for anything we do. And we don’t always think through every action and ask why we’re doing it. Sometimes we just react to a situation. Because of that, it’s easy to find ourselves in a place where we’re giving our first loyalty, where we’re giving our absolute best to something that isn’t bad by itself, but something that ultimately doesn’t last, something that is much less than God. We won’t be able to answer those questions unless we engage in some serious self examination, unless we’re willing to look inside and say, “what’s my real motivation here?”

I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. Last week we had gospel singer Harlan Burton here to sing for us. He sang some really beautiful songs about Jesus and about Heaven, and we politely applauded. We’re not an especially emotional or charismatic congregation, and polite applause is about all the emotion we’re going to openly display in church most of the time. But then Harlan ended his set of songs by singing Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American.” That’s a really nice song, but it’s not a hymn. It’s a song about our country, and God is just kind of mentioned as an afterthought. When he started singing that song we all stood up. We could really sense the spirit of pride, dare I say of reverence in the room. And at the end we applauded and cheered harder and louder than we’ve ever done, at least since I’ve been here.

I’ve been reflecting on this for the past week, and I think we all need to ask ourselves some questions that might be uncomfortable. When we gather here to worship God, we sing and pray and proclaim together that God is the one who holds our highest loyalty, that God is the object of our ultimate concern, and as such we pledge to give God our absolute best. But did we reserve our loudest cheers and our deepest demonstrations of pride and loyalty for our country, and not for God? Have we gotten caught up and unintentionally given our best to something that, while great, is much, much less than God? Have we unintentionally given to Caesar something that really belongs to God?

I realize this is an uncomfortable question, and I don’t ask it lightly. I am a proud citizen of the United States and I honor the sacrifice many of you have made by serving in our armed forces. I pose this question to us because it is one that Jesus challenged people with in his day, and it rings true in our time. We worship a God who became one of us and was killed for, among other things, suggesting that we owe our first loyalty, that we owe the best of what we are to something that is greater and more eternal than any government or nation ever could be. We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to our creator to ask these hard questions so that we know where our true loyalties ultimately lie.

As we come to the table today, let us do so seeking to renew and strengthen our commitment to seek first God’s Kingdom and God’s righteousness. Let us come together and partake of Christ’s body and his blood, knowing that we follow in the footsteps of the one who was killed because he was a threat to the powers of this world, the one who rose again because our God is greater than any of those powers ever could be. God gave his very best to us, let’s give our very best to God.

In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Amen.

BLOG: Preaching Bin Laden's Death

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:53:39 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

I haven't been able to turn on the TV in the last 24 hours without hearing people analyze the death of Osama bin Laden from every conceivable angle. Even though it's Monday, it's very likely that this will still be on people's minds come Sunday. So if we are to do theology with "the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other", as Karl Barth said (or having both apps open on our iPad), then clearly pastors have to say something about it in the coming days.

But what do we say? I've had a lot of thoughts, few of them complete and some that are even in tension with one another. Then there are the questions, and the scriptures that must inform our response.

Thoughts

The first images I saw were of a crowd of mostly college students cheering and spilling beer on one another outside the White House, acting like their team had just won a championship. That made my stomach turn, because it's likely that few if any of these people actually lost anyone in 9/11 or the War on Terror.

Speaking of the families of the victims, we saw images of a much more somber gathering at Ground Zero. All the victims' families expressed relief that bin Laden is no longer able to hurt anyone, but they also acknowledged that it won't bring their loved ones back.

I can also understand relief and celebration on the part of our servicemen and women, who have been feeling the strain of the War on Terror for a decade now.

Having spent a lot of time with combat veterans the past few years, I've noticed a clear difference in the attitudes of those who have seen the guy next to them get killed, and the attitudes of those whose combat experience comes solely from playing first-person-shooter video games. Those who have seen combat first hand don't have any romantic notions about it, nor do they cheer and chest-thump when hearing tales of others in combat.

While I'm not sad that he's gone, I don't believe we should rejoice at the death of anybody, even a person as evil as bin Laden.

I'm uncomfortable at how many Christians on the net are rejoicing about bin Laden being in Hell. That may well be the case, but let's leave judgment to God, and direct our energy toward compassion for his victims.

I was really shocked that bin Laden was still alive. Since he's easily recognizable, has serious health problems, and was supposedly living in caves all these years, I figured he was dead.

I really appreciate hearing how our military went about this raid. They verified their intelligence, and they went in and did a "surgical strike" (I think that's the correct term) on the ground, doing everything they could to make sure bystanders didn't get caught in the crossfire. I'm impressed that we didn't bomb the whole neighborhood in hopes of getting him and chalking all the other deaths up to "collateral damage".

I also appreciate how they buried bin Laden's body in accordance with Islamic tradition, washing the body and saying prayers before burying it at sea. I applaud them for maintaining the moral high ground when few people would have faulted them for doing otherwise.

I struggle with the idea that we "had" to kill bin Laden. It was a choice, and I think there were no good options available. He actively plotted acts of terror and rejoiced in the deaths of innocent people, so doing nothing to stop him when we had the ability to would make us complicit in his acts. If someone was going to harm my family and I harmed them in the process of preventing them from doing so, I would not consider it a "good" thing, but doing nothing would have been worse. I'm not comfortable with the phrase "necessary evil", but I do believe that the reality of living in a fallen world means that we sometimes have to choose the "least bad option" when good options are off the table.

Questions

How will bin Laden's death impact people's perception (born out of more than a little latent racism) of Muslims and Arab-Americans?

What will this mean in terms of our involvement in Afghanistan?

Since he was living in a suburb of Islamabad, what does that say about Pakistan and our diplomatic and military relationships with them?

Scriptures

Ezekiel 18:32 For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!

Proverbs 24:17 Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice.

And, of course, Matthew 5:44-45 (the whole Sermon on the Mount, for that matter) But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

All these things will be swimming around my head this week as I consider how to respond pastorally on Sunday, in my sermon and in other conversations. How will you respond?

ARTICLE: Worship for Communities in Crisis

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:24:21 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Early one morning I was awakened at sunrise by someone pounding on my door. I was at the Methodist Seminary in San Jose, Costa Rica, on a mission trip, and I expected this day, like the ones before it, would be filled with shoveling gravel into buckets, tying rebar by hand, and pushing wheelbarrows full of concrete up the steep mountainside to lay the foundation for an orphanage that would open the following spring. Unfortunately, today would be different.

“Call your wife right away, but it’s not about your daughter.” My worst fears were quickly calmed. But if my child was OK, why on earth would my wife be calling me on the emergency line at such an ungodly hour? Still half asleep, I called her back. “The church burned down!” she said.

During the middle of the night a bolt of lightning had hit the steeple of our historic church building, built in 1900 and listed on the National Register of Historic places, and burned it to the ground. “I’m getting on a plane. I’ll be there as soon as I can!” So began the longest day of my life.

I spent the rest of the day getting back to the United States, out of communication, playing out every conceivable scenario in my head. What was happening? How were people reacting? How on earth were we going to have worship on Sunday? What do I say to these people who just lost a building that was like a close family member? Did God seriously want me to be the leader in this time of crisis?

Planning the 'Funeral'

I arrived back home very late on a Thursday night, realizing I had 48 hours to plan a worship service with literally no resources immediately available. We’d have to borrow everything we would need.

Friday morning I hit the ground running. When I drove around the curve where I was used to seeing the quaint white siding and green shingles of the facade of our building, I saw only smoking rubble, scorched trees, and dozens of people standing around because they didn’t know what else to do. All day people talked, cried, hugged each other, prayed together, and began to ponder what to do next. My phone was ringing constantly. Since we were in a rural area without much cell coverage, the only way I could talk at all was standing on top of a cement picnic table, speaking very loudly into my phone, which must have been a strange sight.

The remains of the building were still smoldering, and occasionally small fires flared back up, so it wasn’t safe to go inside the yellow sheriffs’ tape. But outside the tape I saw a a long pile of bricks strewn haphazardly, spilling over into our cemetery. One of our older members informed me that the sanctuary had been heated by a coal-burning stove that, with the arrival of a central HVAC unit, had been removed and the chimney plastered over. He and his brothers had been charged with keeping the stove going during services as boys. Holding a brick, he remarked “Heck, I’m surprised we didn't burn the place down back then!” He trailed off, his face falling in a somber grimace. “Still, it feels good to be holding a piece of what’s left.”

“Let’s build a Wailing Wall!” I blurted out. The Wailing Wall (it’s official name is the Western Wall) is all that is left of the place where Solomon’s Temple once stood in Jerusalem. For centuries Jews and people of other faiths have come to pray at this wall, touching the stones that once supported God’s house. People also write down prayers and leave them between the stones in the wall. A tangible piece of something sacred that was destroyed. A physical point of contact that helped people feel closer to God. If it worked in Jerusalem, why couldn’t it work for us? So we got some cement, collected the bricks, and made our own little wailing wall.

Liturgy and Symbol

I had a professor in seminary who told us that liturgy gives us a way to express our feelings when we have no words. There are times when using words written by others enables us to name something profound that is happening within ourselves, but the experience is too raw for us to define it right then.

This professor also helped us understand the importance of symbols in worship. Borrowing from the theology of Paul Tillich, symbols are not just replacements or markers of some larger thing. They are elements that actually participate in the higher reality to which they point. Whether it is the water of baptism, the bread and wine/juice of the Lord’s Supper, or images like crosses, icons, or piles of brick, symbols engage our senses and allow us to more deeply experience the transcendent reality we are pointing toward than words alone can do.

I pastor in the United Methodist tradition, and we have a wealth of liturgical resources that are drawn from a variety of sources, the chief one being the liturgical tradition of the Church of England, from which Methodism emerged. This church building had been the site of many important moments for generations of families, and many expressed that losing the building was like losing a family member. So we adapted the Greeting from the order of service for a funeral, which acknowledges the grief and pain we are feeling in that moment, but also proclaims our hope in God’s ability end suffering and death, creating new life in the Resurrection.

In this worship service we were also saying goodbye, for a time, to a piece of property that was, as another member described it, “the holiest place I’ve ever known." As one of my mentors said to me, “it’s their Jerusalem." So at the end of the service we borrowed from the liturgy of taking leave of a building that is used when a congregation moves or disbands, omitting the lines about deconsecrating the space. (The complete order of worship we used can be downloaded at the bottom of this article). This provided closure for that space, but also promised a future return.

During the prayer time we took another cue from Jerusalem and handed out pieces of paper and pens for people to write prayers and stick them in between the bricks of our wailing wall. And since this time felt so final, even like a death, we closed the service by celebrating Holy Communion, again borrowing from the order for the Lord’s Supper for a funeral. Recalling the Last Supper, the darkest night of Jesus and the disciples’ lives, Holy Communion serves as a powerful reminder that even in the bleakest of circumstances, there is hope. The finality of death is taken over by the power of the Resurrection, and no force on earth, not even the awesome forces of nature, can take that hope away from us.

We've walked a long road since that day, facing the challenges of visioning for our new space and all the practical tasks required for designing and financing a new, bigger building. But that first worship after the fire stands out in our minds as a turning point, a time when we could mourn what was lost and celebrate the hope for renewal that God promises, even in the moments when hope is hard to find.

BLOG: The Holy Machine

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:31:00 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Today I came across a really interesting passage in The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey, which is the last volume in Thomas Merton's journals before his untimely death in December of 1968.

On Christmas Eve of 1967, Merton was experiencing a lot of tension in the monastery and in his own life. He was questioning his calling in a very deep way, and it didn't help that Gethsemane was experiencing a divisive election of a new abbot. Merton was floated as a candidate for the position, but did not want it and made that quite clear to everyone.

He expressed his frustration in these words:

The Church is a great treadmill, and when you turn it, it churns out an ineffable substance called grace, and he who gets his pail full is thereafter untouchable, impervious to everything, neither man nor God can tell him anything. He is justified. He is right. He has a right to bash your head in if you even think of questioning it.

I can identify with Father Thomas' feelings. He is chest deep in "church politics", when people let the lesser sides of their humanness run the day and make others cynical about the real value of the church. Vietnam and contentious debates about "Just War" are also very much on his mind. Merton is talking specifically about the Roman Catholic Church, being part of a strict monastic order, but you could easily apply his comments to any organized religious group.

Anyone who spends much time deeply engaged in any type of faith community experiences this kind of disillusionment, and it can be a regular occurrence if you are a clergy-person. The past year has been full of these kind of low moments for me on a number of levels, and right now I'm finding myself in a place where I'm still climbing out of a deep funk.

The good news, though, is that God is with us in these low places as much as anywhere else, and it is in these low places that we experience God's grace more powerfully because we are much more aware of our need for it.

As stuck as I can feel sometimes, I know that God is leading me through these dark places into a better future where I will be stronger for having gone through it. And God will continue to use the Holy Machine of the Church, in spite of and even through its many flaws. I'm going to try very hard to choose to not give up on the Church Universal, even in moments of frustration and anxiety. God hasn't given up on us, so why should we?

ARTICLE: Review: The Stewardship Companion

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 18:20:17 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

David Mosser’s Stewardship Companion (Westminster John Knox) takes on a very ambitious task: to show how the theme of stewardship can be found in at least one of the texts for every single Sunday in the three year lectionary cycle. He is largely successful in doing so. While the Bible is a collection of books of such diversity that it is difficult to legitimately claim that there are many consistent themes throughout, stewardship is one that can be found almost everywhere.

Although Mosser never explicitly gives a definition of stewardship, it is clear that he understands it to be about more than just giving money to the church, although that is an important component. His reflections understand stewardship as relating to how we use everything we have, including money.

Other things become the focus of responsible stewardship, as well. Reflecting on a passage from 2 Peter (Transfiguration Sunday, year A), we see how we are called to be faithful stewards of scripture and the tradition we receive from the generations that come before us. On the Third Sunday of Lent in Year B, the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) show us a model of how we are to be faithful stewards of our relationships with one another. Early in Ordinary Time of Year C, we see how a passage from Luke 7 challenges us to be faithful stewards of our space by welcoming the stranger in our midst.

Of course money is a subject of stewardship, too. Old Testament commands about giving first fruits to God (Deuteronomy 26) and New Testament stories like the poor widow’s gift of two copper coins (Mark 12) also get very thoughtful treatment.

If you’re looking for fresh, interesting ways of preaching on stewardship that go beyond reasons why it is important to tithe, this book is an excellent resource. Stewardship is about the way we live our entire lives, not just what we put in the plate on Sundays. This book will help you and your congregation understand that in a deeper way.

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: The Temptation of Eve and of Jesus

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 20:43:52 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

The easiest way to get someone to do something is to tell them they can’t do it. This has literally been the case from the beginning. Adam and Eve had a great thing going but it wasn’t enough. They just had to go eat from the one tree that God told them to stay away from. And now we have to wear clothes, toil, experience pain in giving birth, and eventually die. All because there’s something inside of us that makes us yearn to do the one thing we’re not supposed to.

One thing I’ve never been able to figure out is why God put that tree in the Garden in the first place. I mean, he created Adam and Eve. God had to know they were going to do the one thing they weren’t supposed to do. So why even have it there? This is a question without a definitive answer, of course. The writer of Genesis never says why God put the tree there, just that it was there and that Adam and Eve ate. While it’s a question worth considering, whether it be in the college Philosophy class or around the table in a coffee shop, the fact remains that Sin is in the world and it’s a big, big problem.

Matthew brings the Sin issue full circle. In this particular gospel Jesus is the new Adam, the new Moses, and the new Israel all at once, and he fares much better than Adam and Eve did when facing temptation. Jesus stands out in the desert having a theological battle-royal with Satan, but he never gives in. They keep trading Bible verses back and forth until the devil gives up and goes home, leaving Jesus to take a badly needed shower.

At this point I think the preacher is supposed to say, “This is why you’d better memorize a whole bunch of Bible verses, so you, too, can triumph over the Devil!”, but I don’t think that’s really the point. Yes, Jesus won the proof-texting battle, but not because he was a better Torah student than the devil. He overcame temptation because he was free from Sin.

When we say Jesus was free from Sin, we’re talking about a whole lot more than never breaking any of God’s commandments (because, as I recall, he broke more than a few Sabbath laws). There are individual transgressions we call sins (lower case “s”), but the key to Jesus’ overcoming temptation, and the problem that Adam and Eve had to start with, was Sin (capital “S”). Another word we could use is estrangement: a broken relationship. Adam and Eve’s relationship with God was already broken when they decided they knew better than God and to eat the fruit. Jesus was fully God and fully human, so even though he was tempted, he could clearly see what was and was not God’s will. Through Jesus we can not only see what a fully restored relationship with God looks like, but we can also experience that relationship in him. Thanks be to God.

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: In the Wilderness

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:18:40 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

“Do you ever feel like you just don’t belong anywhere?”

This question was posed to me by an older and wiser colleague of mine a while back. We were both at a conference with pastors from all different denominations, and we had both been recently informed that we had been appointed to new churches, and we were both a bit nervous about it.

“All the time.” I replied. That was the end of the conversation. Nothing more needed to be said. In that moment we recognized a tremendous kinship with one another because we both found ourselves in the wilderness.

The wilderness is one of the most important symbols we find throughout the Bible. The wilderness is significant because it stands in contrast to the city. In the city all of your needs are met, you are protected from the elements and predators, there are lots of things to see and do, and you can be secure in your surroundings. The wilderness is a whole different story. In the wilderness you don’t know where your next meal or drink of water is coming from, you don’t know where you next lodging will be, you are at the mercy of nature, and you are all alone. In the wilderness there are no distractions and there are no protections. It’s just you and God. So it’s no surprise that our most powerful images of God’s might, God’s wrath, God’s protection, and God’s provision for our every need come from times that people found themselves in the wilderness.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a wilderness even if we’re in the city. The Samaritan woman lived among the people in Sychar, but she was all alone in the crowd. She had to come to the well during the hottest part of the day to avoid the stares and whispers of her neighbors. And it’s here in her own personal wilderness that she meets Jesus. This brief encounter at the well heals her where she is most vulnerable and most broken. Just like the Israelites in the wilderness, this woman had to come to a place where God was all she had to realize that God is all she needed.

During Lent some of us give up things like sweets, red meat, or bad habits. Some of us even fast and pray. The whole idea is that the absence of a certain familiar thing creates a kind of wilderness for us so we can focus on God’s presence in our lives. During this season let’s also keep an eye out for those among us that find themselves in a long term wilderness. Let us, like Jesus, offer the living water of love and fellowship for which they so greatly thirst.

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: Father Abraham

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:59:11 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you (ladies included), so let’s all praise the Lord!

That’s the first thing I learned about Abraham. He’s our spiritual ancestor, and he’s the common link we have not only with our Jewish brothers and sisters, but with our Muslim brothers and sisters as well. We’re all family because of Abraham, so we should just all get along.

As I got older, however, and I decided to read this story for myself, I found out this whole thing was a little bit more complicated. I found out that the story of Abraham is a very strange one. He gets up and leaves his land at an extreme old age because some deity he’s never heard of (who turns out to be the God of the universe, but ol’ Abe doesn’t know that at the time) tells him to. This God promises him a child in his old age but takes so long to deliver on the promise that he has a child with a slave girl, only to have a child with his wife, and send the first son off to die in the wilderness to avoid a fight over his small inheritance. Oh, and let’s not forget that whole “kill my son because God says so” incident (with all due respect to Soren Kierkegaard, that story makes me question Abe’s sanity)!

As strange as the story is in places, Abraham remains a pillar of our faith because of his obedience to God. And it’s this obedience, even in the midst of doubt, misunderstanding, and frequent mistakes that makes this story so valuable and relevant for us thousands of years later. Paul talks at length about the example of Abraham because Abraham is an active recipient of God’s grace. He didn’t earn his salvation by doing what he did, but neither did he simply take God’s grace for granted and do nothing with it. Paul is telling us that we, too, can’t earn our salvation by doing all the right things, but neither should we simply pray one prayer and go on living our lives as if Jesus had never come.

Speaking of Jesus, he also talks about what it is to be an active recipient of God’s grace. In his late night conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus coins the phrase “born again”. That’s a term that has become very loaded in the last two millennia. Being born is not something we choose to happen to us, but we participate in the process of being born nonetheless. It’s some mixture of our actions, the actions of our parents and others who care for us, and the actions of God. We can understand a lot about it but in the end it remains a beautiful mystery. Just like Abram received the new name Abraham to signify his new life, we, too, are being continually reborn and remade into God’s likeness. We doubt, we stumble, and we make mistakes, but God never gives up on us, because God is just that good.

ARTICLE: Collaborative Preaching and Holy Conversation

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:06:41 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

“What?! How can the Bible say that?! That’s complete garbage!”

This is something you might hear on a typical Tuesday night at Starbucks on Madison Street in Clarksville, Tennessee. That’s where members of Bethlehem United Methodist Church and their pastor (yours truly) gather each week to discuss the scripture passages that will be read and proclaimed the following Sunday in worship. We call this gathering the Roundtable Pulpit. Commonly heard are reactions of surprise, disgust, frustration, and confusion. That’s to be expected because sometimes the Bible can be surprising, frustrating, and confusing. Sometimes what it says even seems disgusting and offensive to those of us who live in a very different world than that in which the biblical writers lived. But just as common as the negative reactions are ones of amazement, wonder, awe, and beauty. The Bible is all of these things, too, so we gather each week to face it head-on in an attempt to know God better.

The Roundtable Pulpit is not your typical Bible study. The goal is not for us to leave with a nice, clean nugget of spiritual wisdom. Nor is it for us to leave sharing a common sense of what exactly a particular passage says. We recognize that each of us reads the Bible in very different ways because we bring different backgrounds and life experiences to the table. I read the Bible as a white, upper-middle-class male with a seminary education, with the vast majority of my vocational experience being in the local church. Reading the Bible from this location is not intrinsically any better than that of a person who never went to college and has spent most of his career in the military, or that of someone who has spent all her life on a farm. But my way of reading the Bible gets privileged because I am called to ordained ministry and have the proper credentials to preach. So if I prepare a sermon each week only considering my own insights, experiences, and opinions, the entire church misses out on the insights, experiences, and opinions of those who approach the Bible in different ways than I do.

So each week we get together to share our insights with one another, to learn from one another’s perspectives, and often to argue with and challenge one another’s readings of the biblical text. The practice of collaborative preaching—of eliciting the input of multiple people in the process of sermon preparation—requires as much or more background work before we sit down with our coffee on Tuesday nights than if I were simply writing the sermon in solitude. I have to plan weeks and months in advance to decide what scriptures and themes we’ll be discussing, generally following the Revised Common Lectionary but occasionally preaching a sermon series based on something people in the congregation have expressed interest in. At the beginning of each month, I post the texts and themes on a blog that is linked to our church website, listing what we’ll be talking about each month so participants can read the texts beforehand. Our discussions are not limited to the texts and themes I list, of course, but it gives us a common starting point. I also do quite a bit of exegetical work, consulting various commentaries and works of other writers so I can provide some context or ask some leading questions if the conversation stalls. When we gather on Tuesday nights, we read the passage out loud and begin to discuss. There is only one rule: respect. Even if you don’t like what someone else is saying, let them speak, and you will have your chance to respond and voice your disagreement. This way, instead of tearing one another down, we are mutually building one another up by examining and challenging one another’s views. We understand this kind of interaction to be holy conversation: dialogue during which people are simultaneously encouraged and challenged to grow deeper in their walk with God.

One Tuesday evening, the text in question was Job 19:23-27a. I had done my prep work and came in expecting to talk generally about suffering, how we experience suffering in our everyday lives, and how to find hope in the midst of it. This is a fairly meaty topic, so I was absolutely blown away at what happened. We had a lot of trouble getting going for the first twenty minutes. I asked some pretty generic questions about how we suffer and why we think it happens, hoping to kick-start some discussion. Finally, someone piped up and said, “Job makes me frustrated. I read this whole book, and at the end I was really mad at God. I mean, he puts Job through all this to win some kind of bet, and he never even bothers to explain why any of it happened. No wonder Job was angry!” This is when the conversation gets fun because most people get very uncomfortable when God’s character gets called into question. Then a teenage girl spoke: “I can’t help but wonder if Job’s faith in God actually made his suffering worse rather than better.” No, no, people responded. Faith in God makes our suffering better because it gives us hope. But is this true in Job’s case? The girl concluded it wasn’t helpful because Job’s faith in God was based on the idea that good things happen to good people. Job was a good person who had never offended God, and yet he lost his house, his cattle, and his children. So on top of the physical and emotional suffering Job was experiencing, his whole concept of God had been turned upside down. In this case, Job’s faith, or more accurately, what Job had faith in, actually compounded his suffering.

That insight, which came from a high-school girl without much familiarity with the Bible, set our conversation in a whole new direction. People began talking about how shallow concepts of God had failed them at different points in their lives, and how it’s easy to blame God when something bad happens. We began to talk about how God might not be the one who causes bad things to happen, and how the loving God is the one who sits down next to us and cries with us as we’re suffering. We began to talk about times in our lives when God has shown us how to make the best out of even the most painful and hopeless circumstances. At the end of the hour we had a much deeper appreciation of the richness of the biblical text. Although we agreed that the problem of suffering and God’s role in it still looms very large in Job, we somehow found a very hopeful note beneath the surface. As a result of this group conversation, my sermon went from being generally about hope in the midst of suffering to examining how our concepts of God influence the way we deal with difficult times. Because of people’s contributions at the Roundtable Pulpit the sermon went from being decent and somewhat inspiring to a meaningful and challenging and yet deeply hopeful sermon.

This is what happens when clergy and lay people begin to learn from one another. They challenge one another’s assumptions and lead one another to deeper understandings of the nature of God. The Lord can and does speak to every single one of his children, his image bearers. Therefore, those who are called to proclaim the Word of God on behalf of and to the community must honor and learn from what the members of that community bring to the table. None of us completely understands the nature of God. So each of us, incomplete as we are, are called to live in community together and help fill in the gaps in one another’s pictures of God. We’ll never arrive at a complete picture of the divine, of course, but our respective understandings will be much richer if we are willing to learn from one another.

A warning for preachers who want to try collaborative preaching: you will have to rethink how you and your community understand the authority of the pastor. In most churches, the pastor is seen as the chief, if not the sole interpreter of the Word of God to the people. It is true that the pastor is ultimately responsible that what is proclaimed in their church be faithful to their tradition, but it does not mean there is only one true and faithful way to understand and interpret the Christian faith. Collaborative preaching means stepping down off the proverbial pedestal that many clergy stand on and admitting to your people that you, too, have doubts and questions that others might help you answer. There’s no way around it: collaborative preaching is a risk.

However, the risks are greatly overshadowed by the benefits. Over time, regular participants in the Roundtable Pulpit have become theologians in their own right. They may not know lots of obscure Greek terms or be able to quote any of the ante-Nicene fathers, but they have begun to read the Bible very critically and ask deep questions about long-held assumptions. They have grown tremendously in their walk with God because they allow themselves to be fed on more than just what they hear on Sundays. They listen and read and think critically, and in so doing they listen for God’s still, small voice speaking to them, showing them their unique and special place in the Body of Christ. The end result is that people who take seriously their contribution to the sermon construction process learn the art of holy conversation, reflecting on and proclaiming the Word of God to one another in an atmosphere of mutual love and respect.

ARTICLE: Prophetic Preaching in the Real Pulpit

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:14:19 GMT

By Matthew L. Kelley

I went to a large preaching conference a few years back, where one day was specially designated as a “celebration of prophetic preaching.” Some very big names were the featured speakers that day, and everyone I talked to was excited about learning about prophetic preaching. During the worship services and the teaching sessions, however, the speakers said very little about prophetic preaching other than to encourage preachers to do it, with no regard for the consequences. I lost count of how many times they used applause lines like “Who cares if you make people upset? Who cares if you lose your job? Do what God is calling you to do!”

The big name speaker advocated a kind of “scorched earth” policy when it came to preaching about issues of poverty. “Make them see how their rampant consumerism is killing people in developing countries!” That was another big applause line. All of us taking notes on our shiny new MacBooks and still riding caffeine highs from our Starbucks lattes felt appropriately ashamed. Where is a good mourners' bench when you need one?

I agreed with him that global poverty needs to be addressed, but there's no way I could preach that same sermon in my congregation and expect people to actually listen to what I have to say! I wondered if I was the only one with this worry.

It turns out I wasn't. At breakfast the next day, a colleague summed it up perfectly. “That's fine for Rev. Big Name Speaker, but he speaks to a big audience where he doesn't know anybody, collects his check, and moves on to the next gig. But I have a community I'm accountable to, and they write the checks I use to feed my family.”

My colleague articulated a very real tension that every professional pastor faces. On the one hand, we are called to challenge people with the gospel and help them to actively combat the injustices of the world. On the other hand, we live in a country where we greatly benefit from the injustices of the world, and those to whom we minister have a great deal of control over our professional and financial well-being.

So how do we preach prophetically in a local church context? Is the “scorched earth” policy advocated by some of these big name speakers really the only way to do it? Or is there a way to challenge people in a way that they will actually hear and respond to, enabling real change in our congregations and making it possible to keep our jobs?

I believe there is. There's no way to preach prophetically and prevent everyone from getting mad, of course. Some people are going to disagree and get upset no matter what you preach, and besides, anger can be channeled in positive ways. But there is a way to minimize the anger when you preach challenging things, a way that increases the chance that the gospel will be heard and that people will respond to the challenge.

Homiletician John McClure calls it “negotiating a hearing.”^[1] McClure's understanding of speech communication is that while all hearers in a group may technically speak the same language (English, Spanish, etc.), they do not all understand that language in the same ways. Other communication experts talk about people who play different “language games,” in which certain words carry very different connotations from one group to the next. One must understand the language game(s) being “played” by their audience.

Think of this in terms of different theological systems. Preaching in a United Methodist Church, we can casually mention someone's heart being “strangely warmed” and everyone who knows the story of John Wesley will understand what we are saying. But if you preach the same sermon in a Roman Catholic Church, you may not find anyone who knows what you're talking about. Both of these groups speak the English language, and yet they are playing different language games such that one group has a difficult time understanding the other on their terms.

It is up to the preacher, then, to negotiate a hearing by understanding what language games their hearers are playing and to demonstrate an understanding and appreciation for said language game. Once the hearers are assured of the preacher's identification with and appreciation of them, they are more willing to hear what it is the speaker is saying. In this way the speaker biulds a bridge between the linguistic location of their audience and the place they want to show to them, and invites them to cross that bridge. Not everyone will be willing to cross it, of course, but the hearers will understand that they are being invited to cross a bridge and not to attempt a long jump across a bottomless chasm.

To learn these potential language barriers, take a few congregants who seem very different from you out for coffee. Ask their opinions on potentially controversial topics you hope to address in upcoming sermons. Listen attentively without sharing your opinion. Take note of the words they use to express their beliefs and the life experiences that have shaped their views. Notice any “buzzwords” that elicit strong emotions, making them defensive and less likely to hear what you have to say.

The ability to negotiate a hearing was the genius of Martin Luther King, Jr., according to Richard Lischer. King spoke differently to majority white audiences than he did to majority black audiences, because he understood that the groups hear and understand things differently.^[2] He varied his tone, cadences, and energy. He did not, however, compromise the integrity of his message. He varied the form enough to ensure that the function was accomplished.

I pastor in Clarksville, Tenn. Our city is home to Fort Campbell, a huge military base, so much of the culture of the city and its churches is greatly affected by military issues. So to negotiate a hearing with my congregation, I have to take into account their strong connection with the military when I am preaching about any issues that might be controversial. If I am preaching about war, for example, and suggesting that God wants us to be peacemakers, I have to demonstrate that I understand and honor the willingness of servicemen and women to sacrifice for their country. The phrase “pro-soldier, therefore anti-war” has paid big dividends, because no one is more anti-war than the person who has to fight the war.

Or, for example, if I am preaching about issues of global poverty, I can talk about how governments use military force to perpetuate the status quo and prevent undeveloped countries from gaining economic and political leverage. But I also have to acknowledge that members of the military are involved in humanitarian efforts all over the world. That way, soldiers and soldiers' families in my congregation understand that I am not questioning their integrity or worth as human beings, but rather the actions of our leaders in Washington.

Negotiating a hearing requires knowing our audience very well, which necessitates a significant commitment to pastoral care. We have to take the time to listen to our congregants, to know what their likes and dislikes are, their fears and their hopes. Where are they in their relationship with God? What do they need in order to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help us to understand how our congregations need to be challenged, and how to challenge them in a way where they will hear and respond to God's call in their lives. If we are able to negotiate a hearing we will be able to preach prophetically in our ministerial context for many years to come.

Matthew L. Kelley is Pastor of Bethlehem United Methodist Church in Clarksville, Tenn.

^[1] ^[2]

^[1]McClure, John S. The Four Codes of Preaching: Rhetorical Strategies. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. 2003, p. 124.

^[2]Lischer, Richard. The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America. Oxford University Press, 1997.

Ministry Matters: Matthew L. Kelley

BLOG: Gun Control: A Biblical and Theological Case

ARTICLE: We Believe: Exploring the Apostles' Creed (Sermon Series with Free Graphics)

Week 1- GodGenesis 1:1-5; 1 John 4:7-13

Week 2- JesusIsaiah 43:1-7; John 1:1-14

Week 3- The Holy SpiritActs 3:1-10

Week 4- The Church: the Communion of SaintsActs 4:32-37 Matthew 28:16-20

Week 5- The Forgiveness of SinsRomans 5:12-21; Matthew 5:38-48

Week 6- Resurrection and Life EverlastingEzekiel 37:1-14; Luke 24:36-49

ARTICLE: When "Some People" Complain

What to Do

ARTICLE: Mission Trip High: Keeping it Going or Leaving it There?

BLOG: Context, Context, Context

BLOG: The Illusion of Pastoral Effectiveness

BLOG: Loving Pagans and Tax Collectors

ARTICLE: Giving It Up: A Sermon Series for Lent

Giving Up Control

Giving Up Expectations

Giving Up Superiority

Giving Up Enemies

Giving Up Our Lives

Giving Up Popularity

Giving Up Death

ARTICLE: Reign of Christ Sunday

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: Jesus Everywhere

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: Using Our Talents

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: Eyes Wide Open

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: All Saints Day

BLOG: Eight Weeks on Romans

ARTICLE: The Christmas Story in First Person

Writing the Scripts

BLOG: A Prejudice I Didn't Know I Had

ARTICLE: Praising America More than God

ARTICLE: Jesus Challenges the Political System

BLOG: Preaching Bin Laden's Death

Thoughts

Questions

Scriptures

ARTICLE: Worship for Communities in Crisis

Planning the 'Funeral'

Liturgy and Symbol

BLOG: The Holy Machine

ARTICLE: Review: The Stewardship Companion

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: The Temptation of Eve and of Jesus

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: In the Wilderness

ARTICLE: Sermon Starter: Father Abraham

ARTICLE: Collaborative Preaching and Holy Conversation

ARTICLE: Prophetic Preaching in the Real Pulpit

Week 1- God
Genesis 1:1-5; 1 John 4:7-13

Week 2- Jesus
Isaiah 43:1-7; John 1:1-14

Week 3- The Holy Spirit
Acts 3:1-10

Week 4- The Church: the Communion of Saints
Acts 4:32-37 Matthew 28:16-20

Week 5- The Forgiveness of Sins
Romans 5:12-21; Matthew 5:38-48

Week 6- Resurrection and Life Everlasting
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Luke 24:36-49