New/Old Sermon Now on the Church Site

When I came to First Christian as minister, I had the goal of having my sermons printed and distributed each week, along with having it up on the church web site. Unfortunately, that has not happened. The never ending crunch of my schedule and the fact that many times I do not write my sermon out in full beforehand has left the dream of having it to share in print form in the dust.

In recent days, I've been going back through my sermons and trying to get some in shape to share. I just put one up on the church site from last September that actually remains very relevant for our church, even though almost a year has passed. It's titled "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" after the song by Fleetwood Mac, and the point of the sermon is for our church to learn from the past--successes and failures--as we move forward into the future.

Also, I quote in the sermon one of my predecessors, C. M. Chilton (that's his picture on the left)--who was the minister here at First Christian, St. Joseph when the church was largest in membership and arguably had its greatest influence upon its community. Chilton was active at the denominational level and successfully pushed for the denomination to take a stance of "open membership" which means a church would accept as a full and equal member without making them jump through a bunch of hoops regardless of their previous denominational affiliation or the mode of their baptism. The quotation from him I use comes from an address made to the denomination in 1909 at the celebration of its 100th anniversary. It's a part of a web site of important historical documents from our denomination's history and other denominations that were a part of the "Restoration Movement".