← Previous Entries Next Entries →
Luke 21:25-36 Jeremiah 33:14-16 Fox Valley Presbyterian Church December 3, 2006 Back in the Sunday school rooms, Marilyn Church and Charlotte Drew are sitting on the floor with a group of completely transfixed 4, 5 and 6 year olds. On each wall of the room, there are low shelves with boxes and baskets. And just [...]
Tough Bible passages are par for the course when you’re a preacher. If you’ve read my most recent sermon, you know that it was a bit of a doozy. Pastor Carl (head pastor at Fox Valley) decided to do a sermon series on the Ten Commandments this fall. By the luck of the draw (analogies [...]
Exodus 20:14; Mark 10:1-12 Fox Valley Presbyterian Church October 8, 2006 A true confession to begin the sermon. (That ought to get your attention in a sermon about adultery!) I spend too much time reading advice columns. If I’m busy, the “Ask Amy†column might be the only thing I read in the Tribune. When [...]
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 & 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2 June 25, 2006 Fox Valley Presbyterian Church At 5:30pm, four weeks into my first year of being a teacher and a minister, Mrs. Bailey caught me on the phone just as I was about to lock my door and leave my classroom and go home to try to recover [...]
Acts 10: 44-48 May 14, 2006 4th Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Vespers May 21, 2006 Hope Christian Reformed Church, Oak Forest, IL As far as Peter was concerned, he never knew what God would ask of him next. His life, since that first request, had gone places he never expected. He started out a fisherman, a [...]
I’m posting an MP3 audio file of “Lullaby for the Dying,” a sermon on Matthew 2:13–23 that I gave at Hope Christian Reformed Church on Sunday, December 26, 2004. (I’ll be making the sermon text available later.)
John 12:1-11 Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago Monday Noonday Holy Week Service There’s no way around it: whatever his motives for saying it, Judas was right. How many others in the room must have thought the same thing? That perfume was excessive. A year’s pay, wasted. Imagine what good you could use that money for! The [...]
2 Corinthians 4:5-15 Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church, Oak Park, IL Gifts of Women Sunday On the surface, Ashley Smith is not a likely candidate to illustrate and celebrate the gifts of women serving Jesus Christ. She’s no Mother Theresa, Susanna Wesley, Margaret Towner, or Rosa Parks. Ashley’s life story is filled with sketchy details: violence; [...]
Luke 2:1-20 Vespers, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago I will admit to an inordinate love for Christmas music. I’ve been known to extend the playing time of my Christmas CDs well into February. On Christmas Eve day, at about 10:00am, I am generally glued to the to radio to listen to the year’s live broadcast of [...]
Psalm 95 Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago For the past two years, I taught high religion at a college prep school on Chicago’s West Side. The pace for teachers and students was furious and frantic. From the end of August until May, with two weeks to breath in December, we crafted curriculum, graded grammar, pieced together [...]