Get Out Of Town, and Out of the Church
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 ...