Sermon: “Undefeated”, Isaiah 6:1-8/Luke 5:1-11 (February 6, 2022)

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Human beings are extremely competitive in nature. I suspect this originated as a survival instinct: in our hunter-gatherer days, those who were most skilled at foraging survived, while those who were less so didn’t. The development of agrarian societies meant that our survival no longer depended as heavily on competition, yet our rivalries persisted—instead of struggling over food, shelter, or mates, we competed for land, status, and power. In more modern times, we’ve found newer, more abstract reasons to compete: when resource allotment isn’t in question, we’ve been known to start wars over competing values and principles.

Sermon: "Faith Formation is a Team Sport", John 21:1-17/Acts 9:1-20 (May 5, 2019)

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Since I’ve only been here for about five months now, you may not know this about me, but I think it’s time for me to come clean: I have absolutely no interest in sports. Zero. None whatsoever. It doesn’t matter if it’s a team sport, an individual sport, a winter sport, a summer sport, a field sport, a water sport—I just don’t care. And yet, in spite of my resounding indifference to all things athletic, last summer I found myself traveling to Belize on a mission trip in which our primary responsibility was to organize a soccer camp for a community of Mennonite kids. In case you’ve ever doubted that the Holy Spirit has an ironic sense of humor, I offer you exhibit A.