Preaching on Money

Money is a hot topic in the news these days (when is it not?!). People constantly want to know who has it, who doesn't, who's doing what with it. You've got the Tea Partiers arguing the government has too much.  The Occupy Wallstreeters claim corporations and the ultra rich have too much. Very few people claim they themselves have too much.  Most people have know idea how their wealth or income actually compares to others.
   


Here are two websites that can help a person (and a preacher) to be better informed about the distribution of wealth in the world.  

1. The Global Rich List - this site is simple enough.  Enter how much you make (be sure to change the currency from pounds to dollars) and then click "Show me the money."  You'll then be told where your income ranks globally.  Puts things in perspective pretty quickly.  Hint: Almost all of us in America are the 1%.
2. Visualizing Economics - this site puts difficult to comprehend economic statistics in easy to understand graphics.

Here was my latest effort at preaching a difficult text on money.


Setting the Record Straight, a sermon from Luke 16:19-31.  Who are the rich?  What is their responsibility to the poor?  Politicians have their answers.  Protesters have theirs.  Jesus has his.

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The survey says . . . Using polls in research and as illustrations

I will use a statistic from a poll only infrequently as an illustration in one of my sermons.  Many people today, I think, are fairly skeptical of polls having seen opposing sides of an argument use surveys in contradictory ways. That being said, a good poll can help the preacher get a feel for what his or her congregation might be thinking on an issue. Preachers are like everyone else.  We often assume that other people think the way we do about a given issue.  Good research can help broaden our understanding of our congregation and of our communities.

Rasmussen Reports is a reputable source of polls. Primarily they survey political opinions, but also do surveys on other things like, "Do you believe life exists on other planets in the universe?" 58% of Americans say they do. You can browse the surveys at their website or sign up for a daily e-mail of their latest poll. Barna Research Group focuses their research upon the church.  You can sign up for a twice a month e-mail from them that highlights some of their more recent work.

Illustration-a-day: The two reasons people don't believe in the resurrection

Wolfhart Pannenberg, one of the leading theologians of our day, explains, “The evidence for Jesus' resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event. And second, if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live.”

Review: The Text this Week (www.textweek.com)

Website: http://www.textweek.com

Publisher: The Text this Week owned and operated by Jenee Woodard.

Cost: Free.

Offerings: The Text this Week serves as a resource center connecting the preacher to a wealth of articles, online commentaries, artwork, children’s sermons, prayers for worship, and more for each text in the lectionary.

Leading contributors: All of the links are provided by Woodard.  Since this site is focused upon lectionary preaching, her links connect primarily to other lectionary based resources (Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, etc.).

My Thoughts:  One of the most difficult things about the Internet is its vastness.  There is so much information!  Admittedly, most of it totally worthless.  Google a biblical phrase and most of what you get in return has nothing to do with the Bible.  How do you find the good stuff that’s buried beneath so much garbage?  For lectionary preaching you lean on Jenee Woodard and her website The Text This Week.  What resources exist on the web for preaching on this week’s lectionary text?  Woodard has done most of the legwork for you, sorting through who knows how much garbage to find you relevant links to the biblical text.  Her gathering includes tools for preparation – commentaries, journal articles, possible illustration sources (her favorites being movies and art).  Beyond preparation, Woodard provides dozens of links to resources for worship planning – prayers, litanies, dramas, etc. 

For as many resources as she connects to (and she connects to a lot!) Woodard keeps her site clean and easily navigable.  She indexes her work by its place on the lectionary calendar, by scripture reference, and even by art or movie reference.  While the site clearly is set up with the lectionary preacher in mind, the non-lectionary preacher could easily use her scripture index as a way of aiding his or her own sermon preparation.

The only downside of The Text this Week is that Woodard is so thorough in her gathering of resources that one can feel overwhelmed with the number of links just on her page.  But that’s a little like complaining about having too much of a good thing. My guess is that preachers who frequent The Text this Week slowly discover their favorite links and return to those over and over again.  Overall, Woodard’s efforts serve as a great kindness to preachers hoping to discover a shortcut to finding good resources online.    

Review: Preaching Today

Website: http://www.preachingtoday.com/

Publisher: Preaching Today is a part of Christianity Today's online offerings.

Cost: $69.99 a year (or $9.95 a month); there is a 30-day free trial.

Offerings: 11,000+ sermon illustrations; almost 1000 sermons; 600+ articles/podcasts on improving your preaching; and more.

Leading contributors: Haddon Robinson, Mark Buchanan, John Ortberg, Leith Anderson, and a whole bunch of other evangelical pastors.  It does include a few sermons/articles from mainline pastors like Barbara Brown Taylor, Will Wilimon, and Fred Craddock.

My Thoughts: Obviously, there are plenty of free preaching resources out there on the web (some of which we'll cover soon).  My experience with many of them is that while helpful, they can be difficult to navigate and sometimes spotty in what they deliver.  I've even found that to be true with some of the pay sites.  Not so with Preaching Today.  Your $70, about the cost of two nice commentaries, gains you access to a well organized, easily searchable, treasure trove of preaching resources. 

By far, Preaching Today has the most expansive illustration database on the web.  It is easily searchable by keyword, subject, even biblical reference.  Now, as is always the case with illustrations gathered by others, many of the 11,000+ illustrations on Preaching Today will be illustrations that you will never use because they don't ring true to who you are or your style of preaching.  That's OK, many will.  And Preaching Today allows you to mark those that do resonate with you so that you begin to build your own file cabinet of illustrations within their system.

One especially rich source of illustrations on the site is to be found in the weekly "News that Illustrates" sections compiled by editor Craig Brian Larson.  In these short articles (which can be received as e-mails) Larson lists four or five news stories a week that might be rich sources of illustrations for upcoming sermons.  I like this section quite a bit because far from giving the preacher canned illustrations, the "News that Illustrates" section encourages the preacher to make his or her own connections between the sermon and current events in the world.  Surveying these over the past year or so have helped me to develop my own ability to read the news with an eye on the pulpit.

While my guess is that most ministers who subscribe to Preaching Today do so mainly for the illustrations, the best part of the site may very well be its articles.  Seasoned practitioners have provided a wealth of articles on every thing from the technicalities of the sermon to preparing the preacher's own soul.  Like the illustrations, the articles are easily searchable and often grouped together in ways that create an online workshop for the preacher to work through at his or her own pace.  It would take forever to work through all the articles, but reading two or three a month not only helps keep me constantly thinking about ways I can improve my preaching but also provides me with encouragement for the task.

Not everyone has $70 to invest in such a resource, but if you do, I recommend giving Preaching Today a try.

Illustration-a-day: The (non) utility of religious affiliation

This past week a group of mathematicians presented a paper that predicted that organized religion will eventually disappear from nine western democracies. You can read CNN's take here. The mathematicians came to their conclusions after measuring the movement from stated religious affiliation to non-affiliation in census reports over the last one hundred years. It should be noted that claiming to be non-affiliated with a religious denomination is certainly not the same thing as non-belief.

The reasons the mathematicians gave for the move from affiliated to non-affiliated status attempt to speak concerning the basic reasons humans are motivated to join up with religious groups. The first reason they gave is basically, people like to be in the majority. As more and more people dis-affiliate from religious denominations more and more people will dis-affiliate from religious affiliation. Essentially, we're all still in junior high doing what everyone else does.

The second reason provided is more interesting to me. Apparently, we join up with things that bring us personal advantages. The scholars call this the utility motivation. Religious affiliation used to have a utilitarian advantage over non-affiliation. But recent data claims the opposite, non-affiliation now appears to have a utilitarian advantage over religious affiliations in many western democracies. No doubt there was a day when belonging to a denomination brought with it certain benefits for a person in society. In former days, you couldn't do business in the south without belonging to some church. That day is gone. Now affiliation has no utilitarian advantage over non-affiliation. Let me repeat. Religious affiliation has no utilitarian advantage over non-affiliation. It won't help you be a better business person, have a happier family, be a part of a more cooperative society - at least not in the majority population's eyes (For an expanded look at this reality read Darrell Guder's Missional Church).

How is the church to respond? Well, many in the church are attempting to argue for the utilitarian advantages of affiliation. They ratchet up the marketing to promote the usefulness of church. Pastors preach sermons on the usefulness of Christianity for life, marriage, economics, etc. All in an attempt to win back the utilitarian advantage the church once enjoyed. That is one option. It might work. It might not.

Either way it doesn't seem a lot like New Testament preaching that preached not on the usefulness of the gospel, but its truth. Preaching that had little utilitarian advantage (believing the message could get you killed - how's that for non-utilitarian) but could certainly set you free. Maybe, just maybe, losing our utilitarian advantage isn't as bad as it seems. Especially, if it helps us return to the emphasizing our greatest advantage, the truth of our gospel and the power of the Spirit at work in our midst.

Using a blog to organize sermon illustrations

Back in seminary I inherited my childhood pastor's illustration file. This involved several file cabinets of illustrations, upwards of 4,000 illustrations of all types collected over decades of ministry. My pastor was a man of immense organization. The illustrations were filed away simply in the order they were collected, each labeled with a number. Then, in a small box, were hundreds of index cards each with a heading: marriage, sacrificial love, missions, etc. On these cards were written numbers that corresponded to various illustrations. This system had several advantages to simply filing the illustrations themselves according to subject. Most illustrations can be used for more than one topic. Unless one wants to make multiple copies of an illustration, you risk missing a good illustration because it's in one file and not another. With Dr. Land's system, that problem is solved. You simply write that illustrations number on all the subject cards it fits.

In many ways, Dr. Land's system anticipates what happens when I file my illustrations on a blog. I simply type the illustration once, then tag (or label) it with all of the subject headings I think fit that particular illustration. Then I can search the entire system by simply searching that tag word. The advantages of the blog, are that I don't have to retype things if I find them in electronic form. I can simply type a brief summary that will jog my memory and then link to the original article.

I've been keeping my illustration file this way for about five years. I keep this particular blog private because most things on there are copyrighted. With it being for my eyes only I avoid any trouble on that front. When I use an illustration I simply write in a comment noting the date and setting in which I used it. That way, a few years from now (or even months the way my memory is going!) I don't have to go by my memory alone to determine if I've used that illustration before.

This works for me. What works for you?

- The Short Preacher