The Homiletics Online Blog
I recently had one of those days that invariably happen to those of us in ministry. You know, the kind of day that makes you wonder whether working in a salt mine would be a much more pleasant profession. It was filled with contentious meetings, building issues, a renegade committee leader, a nasty e-mail, the…
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“Stem-cell research is always immoral.” “The invasion of Iraq was illegal.” Ouch. Whenever I hear such pronouncements from the pulpit, I can’t help but recoil. It’s not that I always disagree with the positions that are taken, or that I don’t think preachers should weigh in on public issues of moral concern. It’s the language…
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It’s the new buzzword in Christianity and I hate it: Virtual Worship. Virtual can mean “online” in a modern context, but in its more traditional sense it means “almost” or “kind of like.” I buy a used car and say “It’s virtually brand new!” It’s not, but it could be. And so, I refuse to…
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We first published this blog during the summer of 2020 as we saw communities struggling to deal with the isolation and boredom of a lengthy quarantine. If you are a card-carrying member of the “sandwich generation,” boredom is the least of your worries. The S-Geners are people who have caregiving responsibilities for their parents and…
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Rev. Rob Apgar-Taylor is a guest writer for the Homiletics Blog and a self-described “Christmas fanatic.” He recently shared this reflection with Homiletics in the form of a letter to his congregation. His letter reveals how the year 2020 has been difficult and discouraging for everyone — pastors included. Through an honest account of his…
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One of the most important spiritual truths I’ve discovered over the course of a life of ministry is that a prayer for “patience” is the one prayer God almost always answers, usually in the form of offering me an immediate opportunity to exercise it. Patience, it turns out, isn’t something that God simply grants to…
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True confession: I am a chronic commandment-breaker. I do it every week. In fact, my job as a pastor demands it. Every Sunday, I go to work and violate the Fourth Commandment: “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8). I’m sure that most of you do the very same. Now it’s true…
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If you’re like me and grew up in the church, you probably had some really great Sunday school teachers who helped you on the path toward ministry — people who, week after week, gave up their time and sanity to lock themselves in a room with some socially inept yet theologically inquisitive young minds. My…
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I was waiting. At the Intercontinental airport in Houston, Texas. I was flying standby and had missed three flights so far. My waiting began at 7 a.m., and at 4 p.m. it showed no sign of abating. So as I waited, I thought about waiting. You can wait for things, like a package to arrive,…
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“SlamBall Jesus” seemed like such an awesome sermon. A new extreme sport had been introduced in the U.S., one in which basketball was played with trampolines on the court and wild leaping, hitting and slam-dunking. I connected the SlamBall game to Jesus clearing the moneychangers out of the temple and said that he was angry,…
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