preachers must not be boring

"Preachers must not be boring. To a large extent the pastor and boredom are synonymous concepts. Listeners often think that they have already heard what is being said in the pulpit. They have long since known it themselves. The fault certainly does not lie with them alone. Against boredom the only defense is again being biblical. If a sermon is biblical, it will not be boring. Holy scripture is in fact so interesting and has so much that is new and exciting to tell us that listeners cannot even think about dropping off to sleep."

- Karl Barth (Homiletics, p. 80)

the story of my conversion

In 1968 I was fourteen. Our confirmation class studied the “New Creed” that was adopted by The United Church of Canada’s General Council that year. The Mission and Service Fund produced stickers with psychedelic colours surrounding the motto “Live Love”. The stickers echoed the Beatles’ anthem: “All you need is love”. I stuck them all over my bedroom door in the manse. I began to sense that I had a call to the ministry and, in 1971, became an intended candidate. The church that formed me taught me the importance of being relevant and progressive in the way we were living love. This was our gospel. Or so it seemed to me. And when I had been ordained I found that this was what my neighbours in the community assumed about my church and, therefore, about me. It was our collective identity.

relevant irrelevance

In preparation for this coming July's annual gathering of the Ekklesia Project a number of Ekklesia Project members are posting reflections on this year's theme: Slow Church. This past week was my turn with a post titled "Relevant Irrelevance". The post begins ...

"I am learning to pastor a slow church. I am cultivating habits of patience and trust that God is forming a distinctive, faithful people year by year. When I became the pastor of Vancouver’s University Hill Congregation in 1995 I had no idea that I would still be the pastor seventeen years later. Now, looking back, I realize that this was to be my school in pastoring a slow church."

To read the rest of the post go to Slow Church

on spending holy week in hospital

Last year I limped through the Triduum after a bone marrow biopsy on the morning of Maundy Thursday. That was multiple myeloma's first incursion into my life in Holy Week. One year later multiple myeloma and amyloidosis interrupted Holy Week once more. This time it put me out of action for two weeks, missing Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday, including six days in hospital. It has not been easy. Fortunately I am home again and recovering well.

easter times fifty

Easter is the precipitating moment of the Christian faith. Without Easter Sunday there is no church. Without the Risen Christ there is only death, silence, absence for the disciples who have forsaken and fled. Yet for many Easter comes and goes in the span of a mere twenty-four hours. Canada maintains the oddity of an Easter Monday holiday, though few take notice. Our daughter returned home from high school one day, dumbfounded by her classmates’ ignorance. They wondered aloud why there had been a holiday for Easter on both Friday and Monday. They understood that Good Friday had to do with the crucifixion. But they had no inkling of the rationale for a holiday on Monday as well. Canadian culture is not alone in rushing past Easter. The church’s forty days of Lenten preparations can leave many within the church feeling more at home with the tragic ending of Good Friday than with the incredible news of Easter Sunday.

your new news

The pain is palpable,
          death is close,
the bruises are countless,
                 and we are not comforted.
We know about steel against flesh,
           and explosions next to skin,
           and grenades upon bodies,
           and wounds untended,
                             infected,
                             filled with pus.
           All this is old news to us.

friday, saturday, sunday

The long Easter weekend is the heart of our life as a people. Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday are the crucial days that pattern the gospel into our minds and hearts, speech and action. The church is like a figure skater, repeatedly practicing the same figure until the movement is imbedded deep in her muscle memory. So in every season and every sermon we rehearse moving through this three-day narrative of the good news. This figure of the Triduum has become our short hand of the gospel, a way of asking each other “How is the gospel with you today? Are you living in Friday, Saturday or Sunday today?”