Home, sweet home

I'm home again after being away for a few days to preach a sermon series for my friend Alex Jackson at his church, McKendree Memorial United Methodist Church in Portland, TN. Alex and I had been talking about me coming to preach a revival series at his church since Emily and I moved to North Carolina, but we had never been able to make a time work until now.

My series was called, "Commitment, Community, and Power," and it looked at the way in which we are called to live our Christian lives within the body of Christ. I preached - and firmly believe - that the Holy Spirit's power is always poured out in the context of Christian community first and foremost. That's a hard thing for us to remember in our overly individualistic, consumerist culture. And in that sense, it is probably as hard to truly be the church as it has ever been. But it is what we've always been called to do - all the way back to Acts 2.

There's a lot I've wanted to blog about, but I didn't have much time on the road. Thanks for everyone who responded on the blog and through e-mail to the Winnie-the-Poohcharist satire. That was a piece I originally submitted to a magazine that didn't get picked up, so I decided to adapt it for the blog. And for the record, there is no Amazing Grace UMC and no Karen Teasely. There's also no such thing as Winnie-the-Poohcharist (and hopefully, there never will be!).

My brother, Barkley Thompson, is the pastor of St. John's Episcopal Church in Roanoke, VA, and his church recently launched a new website. It comes complete with Barkley's own pastor's blog, too. Enjoy.

Lectionary or Sermon Series?

Are you a lectionary preacher, or do you preach topically using sermon series?

In the new issue of Circuit Rider, the Rev. Bill Barnes, pastor of St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Orlando, FL, has a great article on preaching called, "Lectionary vs. Sermon Series: Does it have to be one or the other?" (I would upload the pdf of the article, but Blogger is acting persnickety this evening).

Barnes writes, "I have personally never understood why we preachers have to align ourselves with one style over and against the other. My seminary exalted the discipline of the lectionary as a way to guard against lopsided preaching, and we were taught to look disapprovingly at those persons who ignored the three-year cycle of scripture. On the other hand, topical or thematic preachers regarded the lectionary crowd as slaves to an outdated method, instead of relating the scripture to 'where people are'." He goes on to say that, during his ministry, he has used both lectionary and sermon series approaches to his preaching.

I think there's a lot to be said for Barnes' balanced approach. In my own experience, lectionary-only preachers tend to be the more rigid about thinking that lectionary-based preaching is the only way to go. I confess I've never been quite sure why that is the case, except that lectionary-only preachers almost always trot out the discipline rationale: that is, the idea that if you don't hold to a lectionary discipline, you will invariably only preach on your favorite topics or passages, and you'll end up totally avoiding the hard areas of the Scripture. Frankly that sounds to me like something a seminary professor said once that has gotten repeated a thousand times. I mean, has anyone ever seen a single piece of statistical evidence that says topical preachers only cover fluffy parts of the Bible?

I have gone long stretches of time both with lectionary and with sermon series approaches to preaching. And yes, it is true that the lectionary often pushes you toward hard texts. (Today's lectionary gospel text of Matthew 16:21-28 is a prime example; it was the first time I have preached on that passage and it wasn't easy.) But what it does not do is allow you to spend sustained amounts of time teaching your congregation doctrine from the pulpit. We have only to look to the early church fathers to see how this was a preferred approach of theirs - I'm thinking here of Ambrose's patriarchal treatises or mystagogical sermons, Augustine on marriage, Chrysostom on wealth and poverty, etc. These guys put a premium on instructing their flocks with regard to Christian doctrine, and they used the internal coherence of the Bible to guide their exegesis. All in all, I think we could do worse than following their example.

Anyone want to weigh in on the pros and cons of lectionary vs. sermon series?

What is salvation?

Wesley said that there are three grand doctrines in Scripture: Original Sin, Justification by Faith, and the Holiness consequent upon that justification.

When was the last time you really heard salvation preached in your church? When was the last time you preached it?

A few weeks ago the lectionary gospel reading was from John 3, and I was the guest-preacher in a little Presbyterian church here in Durham. Preparing the sermon, I found myself gravitating to John 3:3 and Jesus' command that all must be born again. This is not typical Methodist or Presbyterian fare, although once upon a time Methodists were very concerned with the new birth. So I preached on it, and I ended up realizing that my very uncomfortability with the doctrine of the new birth probably says a lot about both the church in which I minister and the theological formation I recevid as a child and later as a divinity student.

I've actually been thinking a lot about salvation and why it doesn't seem to be the focus of mainline preaching these days. Is it because at heart we are all soft universalists? That's my guess. But Scripture suggests that universalism is wishful thinking. Is it because we only equate salvation with "going to heaven after you die"? Probably so, but that's only because we have allowed a certain kind of shallow, antinomian Calvinism to become the standard account of savlation in the church and abandoned our own tradition's understanding of it.

My new column in the United Methodist Reporter wrestles with this very issue. The church's primary mission should be to proclaim and embody the gospel in such a way that souls are being saved. I don't know why we need a church that is primarily (or only) a social/civic organization dressed up in spiritual language. And I am afraid that that is largely what we have become.