Yesterday, I had the chance to preach in my home congregation on the subject of “giving unto Caesar” and “giving unto God.” This was an interesting sermon for me to prepare, because the passage lead me in a different direction than what I might have expected (though, unsurprisingly, Jacques Ellul made his way in there from the beginning). Here’s the text!

introduction

In 1984, representatives from all over our denomination gathered in Independence, Missouri, for a World Conference. As sometimes happens at these World Conferences, the president of our denomination presented an “inspired document” for those representatives to consider adding to our book of Doctrine and Covenants, to be recognized and preserved as scripture for future generations.

One of the fun things (for me) about attending World Conference is remembering how much more useful French is in Community of Christ contexts than LDS contexts.

Here’s Stassi Cramm presiding at Community of Christ World Conference after being ordained last night as our church’s first female prophet-president.

So, uh, is my kid’s dream about a peanut butter fountain a good or a bad omen for all the hours we’re spending in the car today?

This was a hard book to read, but I’m glad I did. Munther is a Palestinian Christian pastor, and his holy anger and hurt in this book really spoke to me. However, I have a lot of internalized resistance to what he has to say, and things feel so big, and I spent a lot of the book tensing up and feeling overwhelmed. I feel called to repentance by this book, and I’m glad I read it before next week’s Community of Christ World Conference, where a resolution standing against Christian Zionism will be debated.

Even after many years of attending, being a member of, and now serving in Community of Christ, I’m still alternately surprised by how many things are the same as my Latter-day Saint upbringing and how many things are different. In the latter category, even though I’ve intellectually understood this for a while, it still surprises me that the World Conferences of Community of Christ (renamed from General Conferences in the 1960s) are sites of debate and discussion rather than a series of sermons.