Sermons - Here's to Preaching at You

this is a thumbnail from one of my sermons
on Youtube... not flattering is it? but maybe fun?

I read recently that people still place preaching at the top of their criteria for choosing a church.   I'm not sure that I believe that... At least I'm not sure that people actually want to listen to preaching that challenges them or really calls them to live their faith in their daily lives.  I'm just not sure.  Of course, even if I'm correct, that doesn't mean it isn't at the top of the list of criteria... just that different folk may be looking for very something different from me in a sermon.

I've heard some bad sermons... and some really bad ones.  Some were just poorly constructed.  More reflected bad theology.  More than once, I've looked around a congregation at smiling faces and nodding heads and thought to myself, "they don't really believe that."  I've heard some good ones too... sermons that touched my heart and called me to deeper faith and better personhood.  I've heard a few that I remember years later.  I still carry with me a sermon that I heard Jim Forbes preach at an American Baptist Churches of New York State meeting over 20 years ago and remember bits of other ones I heard him preach at various settings. (He is one of my favorite preachers).

I take my preaching seriously.  I think I do it fairly well.  I had a good prof in seminary who provided a model that I think works well at taking the scripture and the human condition and bringing them together...  I try to do that each Sunday.  I try to construct a sermon that takes the scriptures seriously in their context but also takes seriously our context and our experiences.  I spend a good deal of time and energy trying to write sermons that are both faithful to the text and relevant to the lives of the hearers... and I try to be honest.  I'm not sure any of that matters.  But I stick with it. At the very least I need to be faithful to the folk who choose each Sunday to sit at Cambridge Drive Community Church and spend a little more than an hour there and do my best for them.

In January 2017 we began to put my sermons preached at Cambridge Drive Community Church up on YouTube and the church has a channel where you can watch them.  We've struggled at time getting the technology where it should be, but they are there.  Somebody has taken a look.  A few have over 100 hits.  A few others have zero.  I have no idea why one gets watched and another not.  If you have any interest in listening to preaching, I invite you to take a listen.  If you do though, actually listen.  Ask questions of yourself (or me) regarding how that passage applies to your life? about whether or not my handling of it is faithful to it? and about the underlying theology?  Does it reflect your understanding of who God is and how God works in the world?  Does it call you to be a better and more faithful person?

In the end, if I'm preaching at you, then I think I've failed.  On the other hand, if a sermon has become a catalyst for interaction with the Holy, a starting point for wrestling with real issues of life, then we're onto something.