CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

Wayne Stacy's blog

Preachers who take their sermon texts from the Revised Common Lectionary are in for a treat over the next few months. This is Year C in the Lectionary cycle, and that means that the Gospel lessons come from Luke. While all of the Gospels (save John) preserve and pass on to their respective audiences some of Jesus’ parables, Luke’s parables are among the most unique and beloved: The Parable of the Good Samaritan; The Parable of the Prodigal Son; The Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, to name a few. And so, I thought it might be helpful here to say a few words about the nature, character, and purpose of Jesus’ parables in order to provide the preacher with a bit of context and framework to facilitate the weekly exploration into these surprising stories.

It is often said that the parables are “earthly stories with heavenly meanings.” That’s true enough as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go quite far enough.... READ MORE.

Wayne Stacy's blog

From time to time people who know of my appreciation for C. S. Lewis will ask me if I’ve read some recent book about Lewis. I always say the same thing: “No. I don’t read books about C. S. Lewis; I read Lewis.” There is this idea afoot that secondary literature (writings about other writings) is somehow as good as, or even perhaps more valuable than, primary literature (the writings themselves). And so, as a result people read biographies or “studies” of C. S. Lewis, thereby intending to understand his “thought,” rather than going straight to the “horse's mouth,” so to speak, and reading Lewis’s own writings themselves. “You’ll learn more Plato from the ‘experts’ than by reading the Symposium; you’ll learn more Homer from the textbook on ancient Greek literature than by reading the Odyssey.” I don’t much think so.... READ MORE.

Wayne Stacy's blog

Today I concluded a two and one-half year intentional interim. In every way you choose to measure, it has been a good experience, both for the congregation and for me.

The interim process is designed to provide a congregation in transition with something of an “ecclesiastical time-out.” Too many churches believe that the primary purpose of an interim period is to collapse the distance between the departure of the former pastor and the arrival of the new pastor to as brief a time as possible. That is almost never a wise strategy. When a church loses a pastor for any reason, the congregation gains a valuable opportunity to re-think its identity and mission, re-dream its vision, and re-imagine its future. In my experience, if a church fails to take an “ecclesiastical time-out,” it just perpetuates and passes along to the new minister whatever dysfunction and pathology that plagued the last pastor’s tenure. Let me say it more bluntly: A church that doesn’t call an interim pastor and go through an “intentional” interim period of self-examination and evaluation will very likely make its next pastor an un-intentional interim.... READ MORE.

Wayne Stacy's blog

I heard a sermon the other day that moved me…to regurgitation, nearly. Ostensibly, the sermon was on the central text of the Gospel of Mark (central both strategically and theologically); namely, Mark 8:27-38. The preacher took as his theme “The Messiah's Mission.” That was okay in that that's a fair assessment of what this story in Mark is about. What bothered me about the sermon was where he went from there. Forcing his subject onto a procrustean bed of alliteration, he launched into a Scriptural scavenger hunt that led him to pillage all four Gospels meaning to mine them for the letter “M” - The Mission of the Messiah; The Method of the Messiah; The Mandate of the Messiah; The Murder of the Messiah; The Mastery of the Messiah. By the time he was through, I was mulling another “M” in my mind - the madness of the minister.

Those who defend this kind of slavish servitude to alliteration in preaching do so because, they insist, it helps the audience to remember what the preacher said. Yeah, right. You really want to ask your congregation what you said in your sermon on a Sunday? How about asking them the following Sunday? No? What about that same Sunday afternoon? No? Well then, what about on the way out the door following your sermon? I didn't think so.... READ MORE.

Wayne Stacy's blog

I’ve been grading papers in my masters degree program classes, and I constantly run up against a recurring problem: students don’t know when and how to document their sources. The academic world insists on honesty and integrity in writing and, therefore, has come up with a system for vouchsafing it. It’s called the footnote. The footnote tells the reader that what follows is not his own, that he’s borrowed an idea from someone else, but in the interest of honesty and fairness, he’s acknowledging that fact.

With the move toward casualness (and irresponsibility) ubiquitous in our society, footnoting has become a lost art. Students now think that if they lift a line from someone else’s work without appropriate attribution, it’s quite all right. But in the academic world, it’s not “quite all right.” It’s plagiarism, which is "education speak" for stealing.

But move that same dishonesty into the pulpit, and it’s no longer deemed plagiarism; it’s just preaching. I’ve actually heard preachers say: “When a better sermon is preached, I’ll steal it!”

I know; it happened to me. It happened when a story I told in a sermon at First Baptist Church in Raleigh got lifted and used by someone else as though it had happened to them.

Years ago, when I was pastor of First Baptist Church of Raleigh, an incident happened to me that shook me to my soles. I came home and told Cheryl about it, it bothered me so. Some weeks later, looking for an illustration for a sermon that drove home the point that everything we do matters, I remembered the incident and told it in a sermon. The incident was this... READ MORE.