Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) will support our European partners and members of ACT Alliance (Action by Churches Together) as they minister to the large influx of forced migrants from the Middle East (including Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq) and also from Northern and Middle Africa… http://pda.pcusa.org/situation/european-refugee-crisis/
As comfortable as I am speaking in public (a blessing I do not take for granted!), I’m not as much a student of the art of preaching as I could be. And so, in an effort to expand my horizons, I recently started preaching in a narrative style, aiming to simply retell some of those “good old” stories. This is a little bit of a shift, because I’ve always had the temptation to drive home a big idea with every sermon. Somewhere in the back of my mind lives a little monkey telling me that every sermon has to change…
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Here’s an old exegesis of the Tower of Babel story I wrote in college: The structure of this text frames the story around action. After the introduction in verse 1, the story begins in earnest with human action, which occupies verses 2-4. God’s actions follow in verses 5-8, with an epilogue in verse 9 explaining the effects of God’s actions. When God acts, it is with such great force that humans are instantly overcome. The author simply emphasizes that God acts powerfully and finally. God’s strong actions in creating these different languages show that God clearly desired a diversity of…
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