Anglican

There are better preachers out there. So, if you’re short on time, go and listen to them! However, if you’ve got 26 minutes to spare, I offer “The Challenge of Christmas Light” to you, and would love to hear your feedback. I preached this sermon on December 27, 2015 at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Mountain Brook, AL, as we celebrated the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist. My sermon text was that day’s Gospel lesson, 1 John 1:1-9, expanded to include 2:1-2. But I also reference the Old Testament lesson, Exodus 33:18-23. ...

INTRODUCTION: ACCEPTING, BLOCKING, AND STATUS From the church’s perspective, is the state a promising offer, or a threatening one? At the risk of breathtaking oversimplification, Anglicans have tended to adopt the former perspective, leading to accommodation, and Anabaptists the latter, resulting in separation.1 Following Samuel Wells in his theological appropriation of terms from theatrical improvisation, the Anglican tradition has tended to respond to the promising offers (invitations to respond) of the state by accepting – maintaining the premise(s) of the state’s action(s).2 The historical legacy of the Church of England has given Anglicanism, as Anderson notes, an “inheritance of a strong loyalty to the state and a conservatism that has led the church to promote the status quo more often than it agitates for reform.”3 This inheritance from the established Church of England has coincided with a dual tendency to adopt a high status (a strategy for getting one’s way), in terms of relative privilege and political optimism, and a low status, in terms of frequent subservience in church-state relations.4 ...

NOTE: The audio (old, broken link) of the following sermon, preached on July 05, 2015 at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Mountain Brook, Alabama, can be found here (old, broken link). (I began with a bit of a mic issue. Ignore the garbled first 10 seconds or so!) — Introduction The “hometown,” “home court” advantage is a very real occurrence in many areas of life. Familiar fans and supportive surroundings help us humans to perform better at many tasks, from singing to sports. ...

Hey internet: I was recently given the chance to preach at my church, St. Peter’s Anglican, on the Second Sunday of Lent. The sermon audio is now online (old, broken link). If you’ve got 23 minutes to spare, give it a listen (old, broken link)! First, here are the passages: Psalm 121 Genesis 12:1-4 Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 John 3:1-17 Then, make sure to ignore my two seconds of speech from 16:35-16:37 in the audio (old, broken link), I departed from my notes — which ended at “Nicodemus then fades from the narrative,” (which he does in the passage at hand) — and said that Nicodemus apparently never gets it and never shows up again. As I was quickly reminded after the service, he does appear twice more in John’s Gospel. Oops! Next time I’ll stick to my notes and not make any extemporaneous comments about minor characters without thinking through the context first. ...