Yesterday, I got another opportunity to preach for the Beyond the Walls online Community of Christ congregation based in Toronto, Ontario. I enjoy contributing to their services when I can, and I was glad that the winter storm here in Kentucky (and so many other places) spared our power and internet so that I could show up as planned. I got to work Jacques Ellul into my sermon (perhaps unsurprising, given how often I reference him these days), though I did oversimplify his thinking a bit and would appreciate the opportunity to dive a bit deeper into what he had to say at some point.

A couple of years ago, I worked with a graduate student to examine the geographic and linguistic diversity in an online Community of Christ ministry that made an intentional effort to cross borders during the COVID-19 pandemic (and before and since, but for all of the obvious reasons, this was particularly pronounced during the pandemic). I was pleased with how the work went and was eager to get it to publication. I’m happy to announce that that’s finally happened, thanks to the Journal of Media and Religion.

Just over a week ago, I preached for the Beyond the Walls online ministry up in Toronto. I wanted to post the text of my sermon (I’ll also link to the video recording just before that text begins). I was excited about this particular topic, since it fit nicely with some thinking I’ve been doing in recent years, includingwhile reading Cédric Lagandré’s book Dieu n’existe pas encore and writing up some subsequent thoughts. I imagine I’ll continue to think on these kinds of themes, but I was pleased with how much the burning bush story—and Jesus’s riffing off of it in the Gospel of John—contributed to my thinking at this particular time.

I’m trying to get back into the swing of blogging with the new year, and it’s been a bit tricky with lots of school cancellations (or “non-traditional instruction” days) and the subsequent disruptions to my work schedule. Even considering that, I’m still surprised to be posting essentially two sermons back-to-back.

A few hours after last week’s post (which was from a six-week old sermon), John Hamer reached out to me to ask if I might be willing to put something together quickly to fill in for an unexpectedly missing sermon in today’s service. I wound up saying yes, because I enjoy working with Beyond the Walls, the subject was interesting, and I wanted to put my skills to use from doing competitive extemporaneous and impromptu speaking in high school speech and debate (those were two distinct events, even though the words for them are near-synonyms).

Leandro Palacios from the Beyond the Walls ministry out of the Toronto Community of Christ congregation gave me a heads up yesterday that they would be using a clip from the most recent sermon I gave for them as part of today’s service. I forgot about this until well after the service, but I visited the recording later in the afternoon to see what clip they’d used and to see what else I could catch from the service. Before fast forwarding to my cameo, I actually ended up watching most of John’s homily, which I thought was excellent.

Earlier today, I had the pleasure of providing the sermon for the Toronto Community of Christ congregation’s Beyond the Walls online ministry. Like when I preached last summer, the congregation is working its way through the parables associated with a particular gospel (Luke last year, Matthew this year), and I preached on the parable of the Sheep and the Goats.

The parable’s reference to visiting prisoners—combined with having recently read Cory Doctorow’s The Bezzle—made me think about a decade(ish)-old memory that I hadn’t thought of for a long time. I also got to think about a Gérard Siegwalt book I recently reread and a recent experience at a spiritual retreat I attended a few years ago. I enjoyed thinking about this text and putting the sermon together and wanted to link to it here. I also really enjoyed the contributions from Estaban (who, it turns out, has some professional overlap with what I do!), Ron, Leandro, Mike, and John, which all tied together into a service that did a lot for my Sunday.

Last Sunday, I gave a sermon on the Temptation of Jesus for a Beyond the Walls service by the Toronto Congregation of Community of Christ. The whole service was great, and I was happy to make my small contribution to it. It’s been recorded and archived here:

As I did the last time that I gave a sermon, though, I wanted to share the text I preached from:

Last July, I gave my first sermon for a Community of Christ congregation, preaching on the Parable of the Samaritan. I guess I didn’t do too badly, because their pastor reached out in December to ask me to give another sermon this month. On January 21st, I’ll be preaching on Matthew 4:1-11, covering the Temptation of Jesus. This has been a fun passage to revisit and see with new eyes. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say just yet, but I’ve got plenty of notes and ideas and am looking forward to nailing things down over the next week and a half.

I was invited this week to give a sermon in January for an online congregation from Toronto. Last time I preached there, I referenced a story from Astro City and got told in a YouTube comment that mixing comics and the Bible was bad taste. Tempted to double down in January, but that would be petty.

Yesterday, during my regular Community of Christ congregation’s services, we sang hymn #72 from our hymnal, entitled “Gather Us In,” which the Beyond the Walls Choir has beautifully interpreted in the video below:

As we sang, I was struck by the last half of the second verse, which reads:

As I wrote earlier in the week, I gave today’s sermon for the Toronto Congregation’s inclusive online worship service. The service was recorded and can be found at the YouTube link below:

I really enjoyed participating with Beyond the Walls. I had some idea of how much work they put into making this look like a professional production, but getting to peek behind the scenes and see how much work they put into juggling different cameras, testing and managing audio, and everything else made me really appreciate what they do all the more. I especially appreciated the images that John picked out to accompany my words, and it was also a delight to see the French translation of what I’d written. I really like my local congregation, but I’m more and more convinced this kind of thing is the future of Community of Christ. I also deeply appreciated all the other contributions to the service: John Hamer’s introduction to the parable made so many important points about interpreting the parable, the experience that Tom Webber shared was moving, the music was wonderful, and the whole thing was an uplifting way to spend my Sunday.

Next Sunday, I’ll be giving the sermon for the Community of Christ Toronto Congregation’s Beyond the Walls inclusive online congregation, speaking on the Parable of the Samaritan (more often called the Parable of the Good Samaritan, but my sermon will explain why I’m going for that name instead). I had been planning to post about the sermon after the fact, but the links for the YouTube live events went up today, so I thought I might share them ahead of time.

I’ve never had qualms about listening to Christmas music outside of December, but it still surprises me that I’ve been listening to parts of Handel’s Messiah during my morning routines over the past couple of weeks. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the music of Messiah, and in recent years, I’ve let go of my attachment to King James language and learned that a lot of the passages quoted in Messiah represent Christian prooftexting of the Hebrew Bible (here’s a great post on the subject by Pete Enns—and here’s another). In theory, this ought to sour me on Messiah even more, but I’ve spent a big chunk of this morning listening to this performance of excerpts—and really enjoying it!

A few weeks ago, John Hamer (from the Toronto-based Beyond the Walls inclusive online congregation of Community of Christ) reached out to ask if I would be interested in contributing a pre-recorded prayer to a June 12th “millennial prayer service” focused on Community of Christ’s Enduring Principles. The denomination describes its Enduring Principles as follows:

Our Enduring Principles define the essence, heart, and soul of our faith community. They describe the personality of our church as expressed throughout the world.