Storms!

This book is designed to inspire, encourage, and remind its readers, Christian workers, laypersons, missionaries, evangelists, and pastors and teachers, that it is within this time of challenges, conspiracies, contradictions, and controversies that requires the preaching enterprise to be forthright, provocative, and prophetic as it presents the gospel message of Jesus the Christ with all urgency, clarity, and correctness. The Apostle Paul in his 2nd Epistle written to Timothy exhorts the young preacher to embrace the urgency of preaching sound doctrine in a time when false prophets and teachers were departing from the organized church, deceiving members of God’s church, and denying the very deity of Jesus the Christ. This was a recurrent exhortation given by other apostles such as James and John in their Letters combating the demonic forces of error, falsehood, and deceit which was characteristic of the first Century and threat to the growth and development of the church which was founded by Jesus the Christ. The church in the 21st Century is also being challenged today to be a headlamp for truth and justice that creates precedents and not a taillight that follows what many want to be the new normal of moral stagnation reeked in falsehood, chaos, and disillusionment. The Apostle Paul charged and urged his preacher in his time then, and his inspired words speak relevantly to us now. “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:1-4). This urgency and charge are presented through seventeen (17) modules or manuscripts of evidence-based sermons prepared with excellent hermeneutic and homiletic precision and preached by the author over a 50-year ministry and 40 years as a pastor that addresses real time challenges, conflicts contradictions, controversies, and celebrations of victory in the congregations he served. Well-prepared sermon manuscripts presented in the book are biblically sound, homiletically structured, and theologically correct and provide an excellent resource for busy pastors who sometimes must preach through “storms” within their churches faced with the stress and strain of their multi-faceted ministry in the church and leadership in the community. This approach to that prophetic word which meets people where they are is understood to be and manifested in three (3) distinct but interconnected and interrelated stages of prophetic and priestly preaching—that is, preaching while heading “to a storm,” preaching while “in a storm,” and preaching coming “out of a storm” with celebration on the shore of deliverance by a God “who is there and he is not silent”. Each sermon unapologetically leads the reader intentionally to the Friday Cross of Suffering where Jesus died for the redemption of humankind but especially to the Sunday Resurrection of Power when victorious living was made possible for those who believe. The motivation and inspiration for this book derives from reflections of a 50-year journey of the author’s preaching and 40-year pastoral ministry to five diverse congregations and communities. The learnings of boyhood on Berkeley Avenue in Chicago, preparation for ministry, and the challenges, contradictions, controversies, and celebrations of life that are uniquely characteristic of the preaching enterprise, are vividly seen through the evidenced-based sermons in this work. There are many more pastors and teachers who each can tell the unique story of their preaching enterprise and endeavor as they faithfully serve. Oftentimes they do so with great sacrifice, sincerity, and selflessness as they carry the awesome but gloriously blessed and anointed mantle of servant-leadership. They faithfully serve when the road gets rough, the burdens get heavy, and the hills are hard to climb both for the preachers as well as for the people they love and for whom they care, even when it appears that the recipients of that compassion may care less. Yet the preacher is called to preach “in season and out of season.” That is, the prophetic role of the pastor and teacher demands that the Word from God to the people on behalf of God must always be presented with urgency when people want to hear it and when they may not. For how can they hear without a preacher and how can he/she preach unless one is sent? (Cf., Romans 10:13-15). The “burden” and even “foolishness” of preaching turns into living joy when that Word from God is received and a new life of hope and faith, meaning and purpose, guidance and direction emerges in a new creation because of the reception of that Word from God. Those who do receive that Word from God through repentance and faith in Jesus the Christ will discover that where there was brokenness there is now wholeness; where there was disunity, there is now a common bond; where there was despair, there is now peace; light has overcome darkness; and a glorious journey of faith and power takes place in the believer’s life. That is why we preach in season and out of season. When the gospel is faithfully preached, God promises that evidence of its fruitfulness will be demonstrated when the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the gospel is preached to the poor, disappointed, disinherited, disconnected and disenfranchised people in our communities (Luke 7:18-23). Otherwise, the beat goes on!