Will Willimon: Preachers are a pain
The preaching and leadership necessary for the church to fulfill its mission inevitably produces discomfort in the people and in their leader, writes the theologian and retired UMC bishop.
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The preaching and leadership necessary for the church to fulfill its mission inevitably produces discomfort in the people and in their leader, writes the theologian and retired UMC bishop.
We’ve celebrated church as “family” without ever clarifying what kind of family we’re called to be, says an adoptive mother in this sermon. What kind of family is the church if not an adopted one?
This baptism that Jesus called us to is fundamentally a call for allegiance -- a “pickling” in the ways of Christ, the English pastor of the Chinese Christian Mission Church in Durham, North Carolina, says in this sermon.
In the aftermath of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, a homiletics professor and UMC pastor finds an important message in the parable of the vineyard owner’s son: Enough is enough. God did not mean for us to live this way.
Hundreds of people, like Peter, left the safety of the ship and threw themselves into the jaws of death to counter a rally of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, writes a pastor at First United Methodist Church Charlottesville.
Guns and gun violence may not be addressed in Scripture, but human dignity, the sanctity of life and other matters that speak to the issue and resonate with Christians’ core beliefs are, says the Union Theological Seminary homiletics professor.
In a heated political season, a seminary professor was eager to use a verse from James as an indictment of others. But what if he was the intended audience all along?
As Jesus, John the Baptist and M.L. King discovered, tell the truth, and that’s when the trouble starts, says the professor emeritus of preaching. Can the Christian witness make a dent in the culture of lies?
Some may shake their heads in disapproval or approval of the election results, but the bottom line is that there’s work to do, says the dean of Duke Chapel in this sermon.
Preaching on John for nearly a year helped a congregation and its pastor enter deeply into the biblical narrative in a new way.
Less talk and more joy. Less explanation and more playfulness. Less selling and promoting and more embodying and expressing the sheer wonder and joy of our faith. This is what ministry is meant to be like, grounded in the laughter of God, a seminary professor says in this ordination sermon.