Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Church Changes

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

         Welcome.  Greetings.  I hope you are well today.  I hope my words help you celebrate what is wondrous about our lives as God people.

          I want to share about the time I first heard a woman preach from the pulpit. 

          I, of course, already knew it happened.  I had attended my church for a few weeks over a ten month period. I knew the church’s associate pastor was a woman who preached from time to time.

          Two years earlier, I had heard a January Adventure compact disc recording of Barbara Brown Taylor preaching.  I wish I had been among the two other Baptists who attended that service.  She was introduced as one of the ten best preachers in the world.  I marveled if that were true then preaching had vastly improved over the decades. 

          I met a woman who presided over a wedding.  She was an Episcopalian priest.  We chatted about theology and how the church was changing.  That was in Alabama about five years ago.

          I had heard a Pentecostal woman preach on the radio for a little while.  I did not listen very long.  I find emotionalism utterly unconvincing and not edifying.

          So I knew women were preachers.  I just had never actually sat in a church and heard a sister deliver a sermon.  

          The first time I heard a woman preach happened a few weeks ago.  I sat on a cushioned pew (another wonderful change by the way) and reveled in the epiphany. 

          During her sermon, as I listened, and heard not a thundering emotional male voice or a trickling reasonable male voice, but a woman’s quiet loving voice, I thought church was truly changing into what it was intended to be.

         The preacher was a petite young woman with short blonde hair and eyes bluer than any European portrait of Christ.  Her Southern dialect lent a musical lilt to her speech.  She preached about serving the god whom we want God to be or serving the God who is God.  It was good.

         During the Passport mission trip, I heard a woman preach every day.  Again, I did not hear the homiletic roar or drone my ear had been accustomed to hear.  She preached more like a river, than a storm.  Her sermons were fascinating, and I enjoyed each one.

         However, if I had been her professor, I would have urged her to brush up on her pluperfect tenses.  I say this for anyone who preaches.  Bad grammar is as distracting as sloppy thinking. 

          Of course, I understand that some preachers parade their bad grammar as if to say that sounding as illiterate as the fishermen Jesus called to discipleship makes them a special messenger of god. 

          That may be true or not.  I can accept any brother or sister who believes just about anything.  Indeed, at times vernacular language juices up a sermon, but I imagine Jesus spoke perfect English.  Doesn't everybody?

          The preacher at Passport always began her homily with a personal story that tied into the theme of her message.  In twenty minutes her message unfolded like a perfect day.  It was truly moving, each one, and had what a church-goer would identify as being the Spirit of Christ filling her message to overflowing.  With my near perfect grammar, I would have to work very hard to preach as well as she.  It was good.

          I think about Jonathan Edwards’ dreadful sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” with its blunt doctrine about a god who hates us.  His homily was the antipode of the sermons I heard at PassPort. 

          At least his grammar was impeccable. 

          Thanks for visiting.  I hope to see you here again. Blessings…