Sermon Archive

Text: Psalm 31:1-5;15-16 “My times are in your hand…” – Psalm 31:15 Well. How about this. We’re all still here! Well, maybe not… it is the long weekend after all and I would expect that many have gone off to their cottage or camping to spend some good quality time with their families and friends. But what I meant is we’re pretty much all still here. Unless you’ve really been ignoring the media over the past few months, and over this past week in particular, there has been a very vocal fringe group in the United States called Family Radio which identified Judgement Day as being May 21st, 2011. They paid for signs and billboards all across North America, including several Canadian cities. It was posted up with great certitude and urgency, with even a flared seal-like stamp with the words “The Bible guarantees it!” in large bold letters. Followers quit their jobs, sold their houses, gave away their possessions… and seemed to be encouraging others to do the same. So here we are. Ma...

Acts 8:26-40 If you peruse the evangelism section in most Christian bookstores, it is easy to find all kinds of resources on the subject. Ways to hold tent revival meetings, outreach suppers, membership drives… it’s all kinds of gimmicks, it seems to be able to get people to come in through the doors. Many of these resources will tell you that if you just follow this particular plan, this specific set of instructions, then you will see unprecedented growth in your congregation… etc. etc. etc. The problem is, there is a multitude of these resources out there, but in practice, hardly any of them seem to work… particularly in our mainline protestant denominations. The problem with these evangelism books is that they presume that everyone wants to do evangelism… so they tell us step-by-step how to do it. To be honest, research has shown that people would rather get a root canal then to even think about evangelism. Many of us have been raised that there are certain topics that you do no...

Text: John 20:19-31 After being in this pulpit for more than six years now, I’ve made the point on numerous occasions that the disciple Thomas has never gotten a fair shake. He has long been branded the “doubter” the unfaithful one who had to see and touch in order to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. We’ve taken this message that doubt is a sign of failing faith, and that we must be blindly loyal, and never ask any questions ever. Many of us were raised that way, let’s be honest. For years we have used him as an example of how we should not doubt, but how we should simply believe stuff at face value, without asking questions. In Sunday school I was always one who asked all kinds of questions, much to the chagrin of my church school teachers. Not so much that they felt that I shouldn’t ask questions, but it was the kind of thing that if it wasn’t in the lesson plan, they’d be out of their depth. Sometimes the story of Thomas was brought up, because Thomas was put in such...