Shoved by Grace

Those of us of a certain age (OK, old-timers) can remember a car commercial from about 20 years ago with the tagline, "This is not your father's Oldsmobile." Apparently, it wasn't anyone's Oldsmobile, as the brand disappeared shortly afterwards. But that phrase kept going through my head for the past 24 hours as I sat and listened to the "rock star" preachers at the Festival of Homiletics in San Antonio. But in my mind, I kept hearing the tagline, "This ain't your Daddy's church." If I could find one theme that bound together the first four speakers that I heard (Rob Bell, Walter Brueggemann, Nadia Bolz-Weber and Amy Butler) it is this: The old paradigm that we have of church and Jesus and Christianity is no longer relevant in today's world. We need to sweep away what is in the past and speak into the future, even if it makes us, or our congregations, uncomfortable. "Do not remember the former things, or consider thing...

I remember my first "sermon". I was 12 years old in St. Joseph, MO and our youth group had decided to do a drama for Youth Sunday. The drama we wrote consisted of three mini-sermons on controversial topics followed by the complaints and comments of fictional congregation members. Then we were going to read the story of Jesus' first recorded public sermon from Luke 4:16-30. We, the young radicals, were going to make the older generation face their own hypocrisy in response to the Gospel. My mini-sermon was on the role of women in ministry. This was 1976 and I had heard that women could be ordained in the United Methodist Church, but I had never seen one in the flesh. The other two mini-sermons were on euthanasia and interfaith dialogue. While I assume that the congregation was kind to our idealistic youthfulness, I do know that I didn't preach again for another 25 years! Standing up in front of a congregation and announcing that you have a word from God can be a ...