What next? Ideas on summer preaching?

[Pauline Crowder]

I am interested in your ideas for this summer? You who used the NL last year, how did you choose texts for the summer? RCL again? Sermon series? Continuous lessons?

To return to the gospel readings when we have already tended to some of them probably isn't the best option.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Pauline Crowder

Bowdon, ND

[Sacia Vik]

We are considering a sermon series on the Lord's Prayer. Haven't figured out yet how many weeks we will do: one petition a week, two per week? After that, not sure. Maybe we will take one of the epistles and work our way through that, much like the NL did with Mark's gospel. Another possibility might be to do a survey of Paul's letters. Our folks really appreciated the NL on the OT to give them a broad sweep of how the OT was a continuing story of God's promise and presence.

We have discovered that the vast majority of our folks have extremely little knowledge of the Bible. We are trying to think of ways to give them a grasp of the broader sweep so that the individual texts, and theology, begin to make more sense. If anyone has any ideas on how to implement that, we are all ears.

Sacia Vik

--
Life in Christ is a blessing,

Pastor Sacia
816-741-3150

[Jon Wolf]

Right now, we are contemplating the possibility of following up on
this NL emphasis that we called Gracebook. Since this past year was
spent learning about God's story and how it is our own story, we asked
"what would be a better follow-up than to start looking for what we
call "God-sightings" in our world?" Our hope is to spend the summer in
God-talk with our mission partners (our understanding of 'members')-
in discernment for not only where God is at work, but where God wants
us to engage. Around our area, we do a good job at 'doing stuff' but
not necessarily concentrating our efforts or really working 'with'; we
do a lot of things 'for people' rather than 'with people'.

Our summer will be spent looking for God, looking for God's direction
in our lives, and engaging that direction through ACTION. To that end,
we haven't settled on the lessons and whatnot, we're focusing more on
how we can engage God-talk in a worship setting right now. Hope that
hits some of us in our wheelhouse as a way to follow up over the
summer.
Cheers,
Jon Wolf
Overland Park, KS

[Matthew Musteric]

Here are some additional summer preaching ideas for the Narrative Lectionary, followed in parentheses by a guess as to the number of weeks it would take to cover such a series.

I'm a planner, so I like to begin thinking ahead about such things. I'm leaning toward Ephesians or Judges this summer (2013).

Daniel (12+)

Beatitudes (8+)

WTH* stories of the Bible (varies)

Ten Commandments (10+)

Minor Prophets (12+)

Seven Deadly Sins and Sin (8+)

Parables in Matthew and Luke (varies)

Nehemiah (13+, perhaps fewer)

Esther (10+)

Ephesians (12+... half a chapter each week)

Small Catechism overview (10+... 2 weeks on each of the 5 parts)

Judges (varies)

Exodus (varies)

Matt Musteric

Pemberville, Ohio