Notable Sermon Awards

Sermon AwardsIn my time of attending church, college chapels, and now listening to preacher’s online and through podcast, I’ve heard quite a few sermons. Many of them blend together, sometimes taking small nuggets of wisdom or simple encouragement, but a few stick out in my mind as having had a notable impact on my life.

I’m sure many others have had similar experiences from sermons they’ve heard, and now with the reach of technology, there’s a good chance that you can share that sermon with others, to be equally impacted. So, with out further ado, I present to you the Notable Sermon Awards.

The goal of the awards is for you to share on your blog a sermon (or multiple) that have had a notable impact on your life. Preferably these are sermons for which you can link to an mp3 or otherwise make available for others to listen to. If you need help with this step, please mention it in the comments below.

I don’t think I need to tag people to get this thing going, but I might as well (Josh, Bryan, Julie, Joe, Zack, Mak, and anyone else). To participate in the awards simply name the sermons, provide links and tag others. You can also copy and paste the code below to place the Award Badge on your blog post:

I have a few I could choose from, but I’ll stick with just one so others can point out their favorites too. This is one I myself did not actually hear in person, but was recommended to me in 2003. It’s a Wheaton College chapel message from the year I was gone, given by Kari Miller who works with world vision. Be ready to cry.


Kari Miller, Wheaton College Chapel Message
(22:05 and just 3mb to download)

Book Review: The God of Intimacy And Action

I just finished reading a book, The God of Intimacy and Action, by Tony Campolo and Mary Albert Darling. It was recommended, via an article Joshua Case posted a few weeks ago. I’ll be brief in my review of this one.

The book discussed both issues of justice (Action) and that of Christian Mysticism (Intimacy). The goal of the book, I think, was to offer a collaborative discussion regarding spiritual disciplines that often seem mutually exclusive, at least in personal examples. Those who are socially active are often spiritually lacking, and those who are spiritually intimate at times lack any real action expressing that spirit. The book combined the insight of Darling and Campolo to offer an option for both groups.

I found the Mystic stuff, which is mostly forms of prayer, to be interesting. It’s nothing bizarre or new agey, in fact it’s centuries old. The stories of the faith of different heroes of the faith, St. Francis, Ignatius of Loyola, Catherine of Siena and others are really encouraging. Reading the book made me recognize that my prayer life is seriously lacking and that these more formulated guides to praying might be of some help and encouragement to me. The three types of prayer are called: Centering prayer, Lectio Divina, and The Prayer of Examen.

What If We Wiped for Our Great, Great, Great, Great Grandchildren?

toilet paperWe talk about a lot of topics here, focusing on what we can do as stewards of the resources around us and our time and life to love our neighbor. No topic is taboo, so we are going to talk, just briefly about what you wipe with. That’s write we are talking about T.P.

We needed some new toilet paper the other day so I made a quick run into the grocery story, recognized the Seventh Generation brand, and grabbed a 12 pack. Toilet Paper isn’t something I had given much thought about concerning my stewardship. Here’s Seventh Generation’s slogan:

“In Every Deliberation We Must Consider. The Impact of Our Decisions On The. Next Seven Generations.” – Great Law of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy

So, regarding the deliberation of which Toilet paper to wipe with, Seventh Generation gave me the opportunity to consider the impact it would have on my Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandchildren. Here’s the impact this could have if we all considered it (from the website):

If every household in the U.S. replaced just one 4-pack of 260 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissue with 100% recycled ones, we could save:

  • over 1 million trees
  • 2.7 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to 4,000 full garbage trucks
  • 356 million gallons of water, a year’s supply for 2,800 families of four
  • and avoid 60,600 pounds of pollution!

What got me thinking about all of this? My BBC news reading, amazing wife sent me an article describing the further impact consumer driven deforestation is having on my global neighbors. Here’s an excerpt:

Most DIY enthusiasts would be shocked to find that their new garden decking helped to increase the poverty of hunter-gatherer communities in the Congo Basin of Central Africa.

What about the recently purchased hardwood table and chairs? Did these come from a 300-year-old tree that, until cut down for export to Europe, supplied a hundred poor people in Cameroon with oil, protein and medicine?

Most European consumers do not understand the impact on poor African communities of their timber purchases, due to the lack of information about where it comes from and how it is produced, and the impacts of its harvest on forest community welfare.

Be sure and read the whole article at BBC.

So you see, it’s not just for our seventh generations beyond, it’s for our neighbors here and now. Next time you go shopping, pick up some Seventh Generation.

Links: Vegetarian, Violence, Samaritan, Purple People, Voting, Green and Corporations

Missions As An Instrument of Self-Righteousness and Racial Superiority

It is the sin of pride and arrogance that has tended to vitiate [corrupt] the missionary impulse and to make of it an instrument of self-righteousness on the one hand and racial superiority on the other. -Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited [brackets mine]

Thurman manages to point out a very very large speck in the eye of his brother church goers in just one sentence. Again, he writes to a pre-Civil Rights audience in the USA, but his words still ring so true. Let me breakdown the two critiques briefly.

If we are honest with ourselves, it is very likely that just under the surface of our facade of humble service, there lies a deeply embedded air of self-righteousness to much of our serving others. I know I am extremely guilt of this, often subconsciously considering my time serving others as somehow exempting me from the need for prayer and confession. I think this is an area that needs to be dealt with much more from the pulpit and throughout the service projects of the church. There needs to be a recognition that much of what we do is ‘justice’ work, not charity. Much of the service that is needed, from soup kitchens, to tutoring, to building homes and more, is needed because of injustices that exist, they are not mere undeserved acts of charity.

The second critique, regarding racial superiority was glaringly obvious then, and yet is subtly still an issue today. It hides beneath the surface for many who’ve grown up knowing the PC things to say and think. They are not vicious feelings or ill-intended, but they’re impact on relationships, social impact and the gospel can be overwhelming. Rather than trying to explain this, let me simply leave you with a series of questions to illustrate the point.

  1. Is the race and culture of the majority of your friends and church members similar to yours or different?
  2. Is the race and culture of the majority of those you have served on missions trips or service outreaches similar to yours or different?
  3. What affect do you think the realities of the questions above have on your outlook regarding people as it relates to their race and culture?

The Impotence of Christianity

Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion and national origin? Is this impotency due to a betrayal of the genius of the religion, or is it due to a basic weakness in the religion itself? -Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

The above statement was penned in 1949, a decade before the Civil Rights Movement. It is encouraging to know that a few years later, Martin Luther King and others would in fact deal ‘radically’ and ‘effectively’ with injustice in this country. What is unfortunate is that besides that brief highlight in recent history, this statement seems to be largely true today as well.

I believe the answer to the question Thurman raises is clearly that it has been a ‘betrayal of the genius of the religion’ that has kept us from dealing radically with injustice and discrimination. Whether he meant the person of Jesus or the words of the gospel as the ‘genius’, I’m not sure, but I do feel we have betrayed them, sanitized them, and remain fruitless, and impotent in our abilities to enact radical change.

Today we still face a largely racially segregated church in the USA, as well as class divided, systemic racism and sexism still has a stronghold in society, and patriotism toward country seems to trump allegiance toward fellow man and those in Christ. And at the same time, pastors across the country our preaching such a sanitized, watered-down version of the gospel, that we scarcely can recognize it for the radical genius that it once was.

We tend to here sermon’s that seem to place dealing with ‘injustice’ as of second importance (or third or worse) behind the idea of ‘evangelism.’ But let’s not forget, Jesus started his ministry with a call against injustice:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,”