More Festival of Homiletics

Micheal Slaughter gave a sermon with his characteristic integrated and flawless screen presentation on how his church is becoming less self-focused and more transformative, by working out in the world, especially in Darfur. On of his earliest actions on this topic was to exhort everyone to give as much to the church's Darfur mission as they spent on their family for Christmas. And they did - some $1.4 million.

Both my learning and my angst at this conference is around the power of text-based preaching. For those who believe that the text has spiritual or divine significance, such preaching carries tremendous power. But my angst is that for most UUs (and this includes me), texts are merely the words of inspired people. There may be spiritual power in those texts, and I believe this is possible, having experienced that power, but they are not somehow created distinct from more ordinary texts. So we who preach in such congregations have a larger library of texts to choose from, but each of those texts must prove itself in the moment. Our people will not assume that because it is from the canon of Scripture, it is somehow the Word.

I find that the tradition at Unity Church of using recent poetry for texts works well. I've appreciated learning how make such hermeneutic, such 'reading out', work in this congregation. I suspect that each UU congregation has its preferred broad canon, and part of the relationship between the minister and the congregation is shaping and using that canon.

Homiletics Festival

This week, I'm attending the 16th Festival of Homiletics, in Minneapolis. This is essentially a meeting of several thousand preachers, to talk about preaching, and hear great preachers. Walter Brueggemann, Jim Wallis, and Michael Curry are among those who spoke yesterday and today; William Willimon and Michael Slaughter are up tomorrow.

Anna Carter Florence gave a talk which connected deeply with me. She said that as homiletic preachers, we must give people faith that they can interpret and empathize with a text. They can do this themselves! We merely show them the way. This is testimony. It is not about telling one's own story, but showing it, but exposing oneself in the process of showing the way.

Barbara Brown Taylor spoke of her lessons as a preacher and a writer. I was glad to see that her advice for preparing sermons was the same advice for writing, things like: establish a writing routine; show, don't tell; use language of the body; welcome provocations; and of course, don't lie (or exaggerate, or plagiarize). Much of this is not new; I've been around Liz all these years, and a bit of this has rubbed off.

Next steps?

My little life has been a busy one for the last few weeks. I've been focusing on completing the paperwork for preliminary fellowship in the UUA, so that I may join some of my fellow seminarians and ministers at the cermony of the Service of the Living Tradition at General Assembly in Florida, next month. I used to have real ambivalence about this ceremony, just as I have had about most graduation ceremonies, but I have come around. I'm looking forward to this, especially processing in the company of peers.

I've been accepted into a chaplaincy residency program at United Hospital in downtown St. Paul. This nine-month program will give me the necessary clinical pastoral educational credentials to work as a chaplain in many hospitals and related settings.

There are several motives for choosing this chaplaincy program. I remain focused on ministry in the parish, and have sensed, and been advised by several I trust, that a year of chaplaincy will only make me more effective in parish ministry. I also realize that finding the 'right' parish position might require some flexibility, so having the credentials to work as a chaplain could be useful. I'm excited about this program; two good friends in ministry were quite persuasive about the quality of the program. Finally, Liz and I just weren't ready to pick up and move so soon, after just a year in these wonderful cities. Even after this winter.