Annual Report 2007

I don't really think too many people will want to read this, but I'm rather pleased with what I wrote for my annual report to the congregation for their annual program meeting this coming Sunday. So, here it is:

ANNUAL REPORT TO THE CONGREGATION
The Rev. Matthew Emery, Associate Pastor
April 29, 2007

Grace and peace be with you all!

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” In the opening chapters of the book of Acts in the New Testament, we read about those very first moments in the life of the Christian church—-that period when the earliest Christians had to figure out exactly who they were and what their mission was as followers of the risen Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit. As the very first converts joined the community of the disciples, the author of Acts shares this description of just what the church was: a gathering of people whose identity consisted of their devotion to “the apostles teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

I believe that we, this gathering of people known as Second Congregational United Church of Christ, are ourselves on a journey of re-discovering our true identity as an authentic Christian community of disciples and on a mission of renewing our commitment to live into such an identity. As this journey and mission goes forward, I think we will find that this identity and life together looks an awful lot like that earliest description in the second chapter of Acts. In other words, we are finding ourselves called once again by God to be a community “devoted to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

Our work of re-devoting ourselves to this identity takes many forms. One of these is through our worship life: our reading of “the apostles’ teaching” in scripture, the preaching in our midst of the still-speaking Word of God, our prayers for the world and all in need, and our gathering around the table of grace for the “breaking of bread”. I am thankful for the numerous opportunities I have already had to preach among you, and hope that the ministry Pastor Mike and I both carry out in this area continues to faithfully call all of us deeper into the Word that God speaks to us today and the life demanded of that Word. I am also very thankful for the ministry of Paul Laprade, Bob Bates, and all of our church’s musicians in supporting our worship together, and particularly for their commitment to connecting the music with the scriptures of the day and with the overall ‘work’ of the whole congregation in worshipping God. A number of members of our community have offered their gifts and time to visually enhance our worship space for each season of the church year. This church has together explored a few new and renewed ways of enriching our liturgy (the pattern of the worship service); I offered much input, planning time, and logistical execution in the renewal of some of the ‘special’ services on the church calendar: Christmas Eve, Ash Wednesday, Palm/Passion Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Easter Sunday. Our continued work to live more fully into the rich practices of Christian worship helps us journey toward the identity to which God is calling us.

Of course, the “apostles’ teaching” and the “breaking of bread” around which we gather in worship also calls us from inside the church walls to live out that teaching and that gracious meal in the world. Many ministries of mission, justice-seeking, and community outreach continued here at Second Congregational United Church of Christ. I believe our partnership with the Boys and Girls Club has and will continue to transform lives, both among the Boys and Girls Club youth and among the people of our own congregation. Even though mission and outreach is not part of her official job description, I continue to be amazed at the behind-the-scenes “social work” our own Becky Erbe does when a crisis arises, for both church and Boys and Girls Club families. Our very capable Board of Missions has taken the lead on many other areas of our mission ministries. One area of this work in which I have been more directly involved, though, is the process of re-visioning the purpose and work of the cooperative downtown ministry currently known as ‘Neighborhood Ministries’. As of this annual report, it remains to be seen what new form this ministry might take. As concerns all of our mission, justice, and outreach work, though, I am thankful for the growing awareness among us that the mission of the church out in the world is essential to the vitality and life of the church within the church walls.

Our devotion to “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship” also shows itself in our ministries of Christian education and formation. It has been good to see a growing interest in education/formation opportunities for adults as we began including adults in our Wednesday night programming thanks to the work of Fred Krauss. I am sure you will read much about this and other Christian education/formation ministries in the reports from Becky Erbe and the Board of C.E. As for myself, though, I have been directly involved with these ministries by leading our high school youth ministries and by assisting with the confirmation program. Our high school youth ministries have been in a sort of ‘re-building’ phase for this year, as the recent years’ turnover in associate pastors has taken its toll on both the program and on the youth themselves. I am encouraged by the relationships I have been able to build with our current 9th-graders, as well as with this year’s 8th-graders in our confirmation class—these two classes together will form our core group of high school youth for the next few years. Our annual junior-senior high Snow Camp was again a huge success. This year also saw the beginnings of a semi-regular newsletter to all of the youth connected with our church, a newsletter currently written by myself but which I hope will begin to include contributions from the youth themselves in the future. As we face the changing landscape of our society and our youth, we will need to continue to expand our vision of youth ministry beyond the confines of simply youth group. For example, some of our older high school youth have been active this year in other ministries within our congregation, including worship, music ensembles (Sanctuary Choir and Martin Ringers), and fellowship and athletic activities. In the coming years, we will need to challenge ourselves into a more comprehensive vision of the ministry possibilities with and among the youth of our congregation and our neighborhood.

Our increasing efforts to welcome new members into our church community forms part of our sharing in “the apostles’ ... fellowship” and our sharing of “the apostles’ teaching” with them. Our own morale and sense of positive excitement as a congregation-—the evidence of vitality within—-serves as a key component in our efforts to welcome newcomers. It has been wonderful to hear from many about the sense of new energy and positive mood shift within our congregation in the last year or so. No doubt that as we live into our true vocation as a Christian community, this will continue. Newcomers and guests among us will see and sense that there is some good thing here that they want to be part of. In fact, this is already happening. Since our last annual meeting, we have welcomed 21 new members into our congregation, and we have seen a higher percentage of them remaining ‘active’ since their joining than in some recent years. It was a joy for me to teach our January-February inquirers classes, and I look forward to another series in June for which we already have 8 to 12 potential participants. We will also welcome up to 10 new members on May 6th as our current confirmands affirm their baptismal vows and join our fellowship. Other efforts within my work around ‘new member welcome and evangelism’ have included active participation with our Board of Membership and Church Growth and Vitality Task Force, work on our forthcoming church website reconstruction, the creation of the guest stations and guest information packets located in our two narthexes, and participating in our March evangelism event with David Schoen. As always, though, all of these efforts are only secondary; our primary task as a congregation is to continue to live into our true identity as that community dedicated to those teachings, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers that mark us as a community of the Gospel. Only when others can experience the substance, gift, and good news of this kind of life together will they find themselves seeking to join us.

Finally, my work since coming here in September has included much in the way of ‘fellowship’ and ‘the prayers’ as I have accompanied you all in various fellowship activities and attempted to connect with those in need in pastoral care situations. Pastor Mike and I have begun using a more structured schedule for our own visitation of shut-ins, and we look forward to seeing some renewed effort in ‘lay visitation’ in the coming year. As always, the cycle of life on earth comes full circle for some people each year; since coming here in September, I have conducted four funerals myself and co-officiated four others with Pastor Mike.

I want to express some special thanks to some of the folks with whom I have worked most directly over the past year: Pastor Mike, Becky Erbe, Paul Laprade, Bob Bates, church secretary Mary Jensen, bookkeeper Nancy Yoeckel, Deacons chair Linda Tolodxi, Membership chair Dick Nielsen, Moderator Karen Olson, all the adults who helped with Snow Camp, and so many others. And most of all, thanks to the wonderful search committee that brought me here to be among you all—-were it not for their efforts, I would not have the gift of working and living among the wonderful people and staff of Second Congregational United Church of Christ.


Looking Forward

In addition to the continuing of the ministries I’ve discussed already, I am very excited about some of the things we are looking forward to for the coming year.

As I mentioned above, I am encouraged about the possibilities for greater vitality in our youth ministries this coming year, with the rather cohesive group of youth that are currently 8th- and 9th-graders forming the core body of the youth group and other ministries with and among the youth. I hope that our mission trip this summer to Washington, D.C., will provide a formative experience for the participants that will be a springboard into the fall. Also, on the date this annual report is being presented, I will be doing some continuing education time at the Princeton Forums on Youth Ministry, and I hope that this experience will also impact our program.

In addition to continuing with our high school youth ministries, I will be taking the lead in our 8th-grade confirmation program beginning in the fall. Mike, Becky, and I have selected a new curriculum for this program that I hope will greatly enrich the confirmands’ experience. Also, with me taking the lead for confirmation, Pastor Mike will be more available to teach as part of an upcoming expansion of the adult education/formation opportunities offered during our Wednesday night programming.

We are looking forward to some greater intentionality around various forms of small groups within our congregation in the next year or two. We already have some types of small groups here, such as athletic teams, circles, the book club, fellowship groups, and so forth. As we move forward, though, we hope to both diversify the types of smaller groups available for our members to plug-in to and help make all of our small groups into supportive communities where folks can engage in conversation and exploration that can deepen their faith journey and provide support and care in times of need.

In our efforts to welcome new people in our midst, I hope that over the coming years we can begin to think about what it means not only to welcome people from other churches, but what it takes to invite people into Christian faith in the first place. A majority of people in my own age bracket have never been part of a church at any point in their life. As Christians, we believe that we have good news to share, a reason that someone would want to part of a church community (never mind whether it is our church community specifically). Much of our society, though, doesn’t know this-—and doesn’t know what it means to be Christian in the first place. If we are really going to be serious about inviting people into our congregation, we are going to need to challenge ourselves to stop providing merely education about our church and to begin providing formation into our faith. There are many possible answers of how we can begin to live into that challenge, and I hope that together we can explore some of them over these next few years.


As a congregation, we are definitely moving in the direction of that early Christian community we read about in Acts: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Our congregation’s new mission statement expresses that direction quite well:

Second Congregational United Church of Christ is a welcoming, historic, and progressive Christian community in the heart of Rockford.

As a people gathered in response to God’s call, our mission is to proclaim the good news of God made known in Jesus Christ and to courageously live toward Christ’s inclusive reign of justice, mercy and peace.

In fulfillment of this mission, we covenant to…
-- join together faithfully in worship of our Triune God, through preaching, prayer, sacrament, and music;
-- grow continually in our understanding of our faith through ministries of Christian formation;
-- deepen our discipleship through service, justice-seeking, and reconciliation;
-- act as stewards of the abundant gifts we receive: physical, spiritual, financial, and relational;
-- intensify our commitment to the downtown Rockford community; and
-- celebrate and strengthen each other’s faith through friendship, compassion, and care in times of sorrow and rejoicing.

I am excited to continue watching this congregation live into these words—-and for me to live out my calling to help enable you in that work.

Yours in the journey,

The Reverend Matthew C. Emery
Associate Pastor

“Wholly Holy People” - A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

“Wholly Holy People”

A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 21, 2007


Most of you know that not too long ago I spent a year working on the pastoral staff of a UCC church right outside Washington DC. I must say that I think Washington is a great place, and I really enjoyed my time there. Some people, though, find Washington—or I should say, more specifically, the people in Washington—rather irritating. “The first thing anyone ever asks you,” they say, “is ‘what do you do?’” That is, ‘what’s your job, your position?’ In the minds of these Washington detractors, nobody seems to care about anything other than if you can get them somewhere or do something for them because of your job or position. You are what you do—your job—apparently.

Now, I’m not sure I entirely agree with this criticism—I seem to think that “what do you do” is a fairly natural social icebreaker in many situations, a typical (although by no means required) bit of polite conversation. But that is not really my point here. Rather, I wonder, ‘How do you know who you are?’ Are you your job? Are you a name on a driver’s license? Are you simply a money-spending, stuff-consuming machine, as our whole culture of advertising and shopping and, often times, throwing-away would have us believe?

Over the past few weeks, I must confess that I have found myself spending a bit of time on the internet, looking at various people’s weblogs (or ‘blogs’) and profiles on “social networking” websites like MySpace. It is interesting to me what people do on these personal webpages and profiles to create and show a sense of their own identity. It begins with their answers to the stock getting-to-know-you sort of questions: where do you live, what are your hobbies and interests, where did you go to school—that sort of thing. But then, there’s often more. People personalize their pages with music and video clips and personal journal entries. There’s the endless personal survey responses, where folks reveal everything from what they ate for breakfast to … umm … probably some things they don’t expect their mother to be reading. And then, my favorite, are the little “quiz” responses—what the results were when they took the “what ice cream flavor are you?” quiz or the “which horror movie stereotype are you?” quiz.

So, anyway, all this is to say that there’s a lot of effort that seems to go into figuring out just what sort of image one wants to portray to the next random internet user that wanders by. But I’m not sure that knowing what flavor of ice cream some random survey has determined that you are really says much about your true identity. I mean, I’m guessing that no one started weeping when they heard that one.

We, of course, know of a people who wept when they heard who they were, when they were reminded of their true identity. All the people—men and women and all who could understand—stood in the square by the Water Gate and wept when Ezra and others read and explained the law to them. Now, in this passage from Nehemiah, the writer is not talking simply about ‘the law’ like we think of a legal code, but rather about what the Jewish tradition calls ‘Torah’, the books of the law, which correspond to the first five books of our Christian bibles: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And so, these people, a people that had been taken away to exile, they wept as they were reminded of the stories of who they were and where they came from: of God creating all humanity in the image of the divine; of God choosing them, the children of Abraham, as a chosen people to be a light to all the nations; of God breaking the chains of bondage and bringing them into freedom from their slavery in Egypt. And surely there was probably some legal code in there too, but a legal code that showed them a way to live as a people set apart, chosen and loved and freed by God—a legal code that called upon them to forgive debts and release captives in the jubilee year, the year of God’s favor. And the people, all the people, they wept as they remembered who the chosen people of God that they were, as they remembered the ways they had failed to live into that identity, as they saw before them the opportunity for a new start at living as the people God called them to be.

Being reminded of who we are is a powerful thing. I remember being at a large gathering of Christians in Philadelphia a little over three years ago, the second “Witness Our Welcome” conference. The first evening, our somewhat rag-tag group of people, brought together because we knew the disdain of society and the rejection of the Church, we sat in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity on the city’s famous Rittenhouse Square as another group that called themselves Christian protested our gathering, in fact our mere existence, outside the church doors. And as we gathered in that magnificent space that evening, the Book was opened, and the Word was proclaimed, this time from 1st Peter: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of [God] … Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people. What more wondrous Word could be spoken to such a group? What more wondrous Word could be spoken through their own books of the law to the Israelites returning from exile? Indeed, what more wondrous Word could be spoken here, in this place, to you, to me, to us?

And perhaps as wondrous as that Word itself is how that Word is proclaimed. The Book is opened in the midst of all the people, before all the members of the body, the men and the women and all those that might understand, those more honorable and those less honorable. All the people gathered in from exile to hear again exactly who they are and whose they are—the whole people made into the holy people and the holy people becoming whole people once again.

Moreover, this is the assembly that we form here, Sunday after Sunday. We gather together, all of us, returning home from the exile that we live day-in and day-out, coming to find who we are. Sure, there may be only some 200 or so of us in this particular room, but we gather around this Word proclaimed together with Christians across the street and around the world. And like at the synagogue in Nazareth, we find Christ among us, fulfilling that Word as it is spoken and heard. And that one we find among us, anointed by the Spirit to proclaim good news to the poor and release to the captives sends us out to prepare ourselves as a feast to share with those who have nothing prepared.

At the Water Gate in Jerusalem, a community gathered, the Book was opened, and a people heard themselves and the promises of God anew. At a church in Philadelphia, a community gathered, the Book was opened, and a people knew themselves and the promises of God anew. In a synagogue in Nazareth, a community gathered, the Book was opened, and a people saw the promises of God fulfilled in their midst. So maybe, like those folk in Washington, who we are is about what we do. Or maybe something even more than that. Maybe we do what we do as a sign of the One to whom we belong, the One in whom we know ourselves to be whole people and holy people—and in doing what we do, we find that One, that solid rock upon which we are built, standing in our midst fulfilling ever again the promises of God.

BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD,
NOW AND FOREVER.
AMEN.

Sermon ©2007, Matthew C. Emery. All Rights Reserved.

"What a Guest!" - A Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

“What a Guest!”

A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11

By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 14, 2007


Those of you who were here two Sundays ago likely remember the somewhat unusual sermon preached that day. In the reading from the Gospel of Luke, we heard about Jesus at age 12 in the temple, sitting among the teachers listening and asking questions. And so, in some sense creating a sermon together in our midst, we did likewise, sitting among each other as teachers, listening to one another and asking questions that lay deep on our hearts. There were many good questions that we shared in that time, many of them the sort of questions for which the only answer is a lifetime of living the journey of faithful exploration, discernment, and discipleship.

Questions usually have multiple layers. For instance, when someone asks “why did God let this happen?”, there’s almost always a deeper, more critical question lurking underneath it; that is, “how can I go on now that it has?” We like to hide those more vulnerable places, too afraid to even ask about our true yearnings. Or sometimes, the questions we ask reveal the doubts and anxieties we have ourselves.

One of the questions shared two weeks ago is just such a question, I think. As I recall, it went something like “how can Christianity compete in a world with multiple major religions?” Or, bringing the scale down a little bit, many people today ask about how the mainline Protestant churches—churches like ours: a part of one of the historic denominations of this country, rooted in historic traditions and practices, and yet vitally open to differences in theology and beliefs and faith—how can mainline-liberal-progressive churches like ours survive in the midst of the so-called competition from our more charismatic conservative-evangelical counterparts? That is, how can Church Street [our congregation] compete with Colonial Village [Heartland Community Church]? Even for all the very respectable pragmatic concern behind questions like these, I’m inclined to think that they’re not the real matter on our hearts. Or at the very least, that there is something deeper behind them.

What might that be, you ask? I think rather than surviving or competing against others, we want to know that there is new life possible here. We want some sign that our faith has not been in vain, and that indeed a living, vital relationship with God can be had. We seek to see that these vessels we call church—this path of belief and practice, this community of people—that these are still good and still have purpose, and that these can still bear the presence of God to us and others. With our anxieties and doubts combined with the trappings (or sometimes the baggage) of our traditions and history, we might just be a bit like empty jars at a wedding feast.

It’s a little interesting when you look at this story from the Gospel of John to see what the author spends their time telling us about. For the first few verses, they zip right through with plot—there’s a wedding feast in the town of Cana, Jesus is there with his mother and his newly called disciples, the wine runs out, and Jesus and his mother get in a little tussle about what to do. (This latter piece will have to be for another sermon.) And then, having zipped right through all this, in the middle of the story we find the author of John spending an awfully long time telling us about … jars, of all things. How many there were (six), what they were made of (stone), how big they were (20 or 30 gallons each), and what they were for (the Jewish purification rites). In pausing here, on something seemingly insignificant, we see a little glimpse into how Jesus works. He takes something old and solid and good—remember, just last week we heard of Jesus going through a Jewish purification rite himself—these old, solid, good things he transforms into the vessel for the gift of something new and wonderful, and does so in abundance; I mean, 120 to 180 gallons of wine is a lot of wine. I must note, here that, while for us today we see wine can have a dark side that people sometimes must struggle with, the people first receiving John’s gospel drew upon many images from the Old Testament and from their culture of wine as the sign of rich, abundant new life. And so, the miracle here is not simply that water was turned into wine, but that Jesus takes old, solid, good things that stood empty and waiting and makes them into the bearers of new life, and new life in abundance. What a guest!

And so, what about us? Is there new life to be seen here in this old building, in this solid community of people, in the midst of good things created for purposes of perhaps times past? Well, is that not what we’ve already seen? Have we not seen the Spirit, the continuing presence of Christ, in the creation of our unique Congregationalist and United Church of Christ traditions out of a past that wasn’t working anymore? Do we not know of the Spirit calling out to the church to open itself to women and gay people and persons of color—and seen ourselves rise to that purpose? Have we not heard of the Spirit calling to out to a congregation to open its doors to it’s community and provide a safe place for neighborhood children to gather (that would be us, you know)? The story goes that St. Jerome, the early church father who translated the Bible into Latin, was once asked whether all of that wine got consumed at the wedding feast. His response? “We are drinking from it still.” Indeed, right here, in the story of this denomination and this congregation, the festive drink of new life has flowed abundantly.

The Spirit still calls to us today, asking this old stone jar to be re-dedicated to bear the fruits of new life. And like the apostle Paul looking upon the church in Corinth, I look out among us and see a treasury of gifts to be used in the service of this task. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophesy, discernment, even miracles—these gifts are here, among you—each of us having been given something by the Spirit. In Corinth, there was an ongoing debate over which gifts were the best, and Paul wrote to tell them, ‘No, even those gifts that some of you seem to think are least important—all of them are gifts of the Spirit, and thus all of you have something to offer in the service of God.’ All of you. All of you.

Having been so abundantly gifted by God’s Holy Spirit, we cannot help but be standing ready for Christ to be the guest among us, transforming us to new purpose, calling upon us to bear new life ever again. But wait, there is something more that happened at the wedding feast that day. Remember that chief steward? What was it that he said? Oh, yeah—at this wedding, the best wine had been saved for last. What makes us think that it will not be so with the new life that we shall bear, too?

BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.

Sermon ©2007, Matthew C. Emery. All Rights Reserved.

The Holy Spirit: It or She (or He)

So at the moment, I'm working on writing tomorrow's sermon. I decided to actually write out a "sermon purpose statement" this week, which is something that I do think is a good idea to do (as my preaching professor Dow Edgerton recommends, along with folk like Fred Craddock and Frank Thomas)--although I must confess that I probably only end up actually doing it about a quarter or a third of the time.

The form of sermon purpose statement I'm using goes something like:

- To those who... (who do you take the people you're preaching to be)
- I want to say... (what do you want to say--the message itself)
- I want to do... (what do you hope the sermon will do)
- So that... (what is the response you hope to generate)

In working on the final piece ('So that..."), I first wrote:

the community might place their trust in the abundant Christ, in order that they might be open to the working of the Spirit and its various and diverse ways of working

But then, I looked at it and changed it to:

the community might place their trust in the abundant Christ, in order that they might be open to the working of the Spirit and her various and diverse ways of working

Anyway, all this is to say that I am a little amazed at what an effect the difference between the Spirit as "it" and the Spirit as "her" made in my own perception of the statement, my own imagery, my own feeling about it all. I think the biggest difference is in the personal vs. impersonal, and not about male vs. female ('he' vs. 'she'), although I must admit I've never much thought of the Holy Spirit as a "he"--only an 'it' or a 'she'.

Food for thought!

Oh, and for those who are curious, here's the complete sermon purpose statement:

Texts: 1 Corinthians 12:1-12 (Many gifts, one Spirit) and John 2:1-11 (Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding in Cana)

• To those who are: feeling anxiety about change in the congregation, and about the place of ‘traditional’ mainline Protestantism in the world/church
  
• I want to say: through the abundance of Christ and the varieties of the gifts of the Spirit, new life is possible (likely, in fact) through the ‘old’ vessels of this community
  
• I want to do: affirm the gifts of the Spirit already present in the community, affirm the ways that God/Christ has already in the past worked ‘miracles’ of transformation and new purpose
  
• So that: the community might place their trust in the abundant Christ, in order that they might be open to the working of the Spirit and her various and diverse ways of working
  

Quote for the Day #2

"The truth of God is not limited to any cultic speech or vocabulary (ours or theirs). It is equally at home and equally difficult everywhere. ... Speaking of the truth of God, therefore, is not somehow speaking of a special truth at applies to a special realm and that is sayable only in a special language, to be understood by those with special training, and communicated to those with a special status, for whom it promises some special future."

--W. Dow Edgerton, Speak to Me That I May Speak: A Spirituality of Preaching (Pilgrim Press, 2006), p. 100.

Quote for the Day

"It is precisely in the tension between the seemingly impossible news of the gospel and ordinary life that Christian existence moves. Even the most atonishing claims and promises of the gospel must be held in relationship to ordinary life, and it is there in the contradition that both ordinary life and the gospel are what they are."

--W. Dow Edgerton, Speak to Me That I May Speak: A Spirituality of Preaching (Pilgrim Press, 2006), 46.