by Guy Sayles | Jul 15, 2010 | Uncategorized
I am slowly working my way through Sara Maitland’s intriguing memoir of her exploration of solitude and silence, A Book of Silence. Maitland is an accomplished writer, known primarily for her novels, who writes with a kind of musical grace. In in A Book of...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 12, 2010 | Uncategorized
Yesterday’s sermon explored Jesus’ familiar Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus told the story as part of a conversation with a “lawyer” (a teacher of Torah, the Law of Moses). Early in that conversation, Jesus and the teacher agreed with each...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 2, 2010 | Uncategorized
James Dixon is a friend who lives in metropolitan Washington, D.C. and serves as pastor of a very vibrant African-American church. When I worked as pastor of a church in the same area, our two congregations would, from time to time, worship together and share in...
by Guy Sayles | Jun 23, 2010 | Uncategorized
One of the finest examples of what I mean by “eschatological preaching” is the address Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. That address concerned, of course, very real problems which confronted the nation...
by Guy Sayles | Jun 17, 2010 | Uncategorized
Whenever I have stopped to ponder my practice of preaching, as I have lately been prompted to do, I have returned, almost always, and again just now, to a late-19th century classic, Phillips Brooks’ Lectures on Preaching, in particular to his well-known description of...
by Guy Sayles | Jun 3, 2010 | Uncategorized
The environmental crisis gushing up from the Gulf of Mexico, threatening marine life and the delicate, vital, and beautiful ecosystems of marshlands and shorelines is, among many other things, a cause for grief, a call to prayer, and a summons for thoughtful...
by Guy Sayles | May 25, 2010 | Uncategorized
This past Sunday, First Baptist Church of Asheville had a service of dedication for our new hymnals, a significant event for us, because it reaffirmed the centrality of God-focused, joyful and reverent worship for our community of faith. Our music ministry led us to...
by Guy Sayles | May 17, 2010 | Uncategorized
Montezuma, GA, the little town where I once lived and worked, is only a few miles from Andersonville, site of the dreadful Confederate prison-camp where Union soldiers were kept in horrific conditions. The air is thick with the ghosts of suffering and hostility, but...
by Guy Sayles | May 10, 2010 | Uncategorized
From years and years now of conversation and counseling and from my own experience as a son and a parent, I am convinced that very few of us live with any active regret about material things our parents could not or would not provide for us. Hardly anyone grieves the...
by Guy Sayles | May 3, 2010 | Uncategorized
One of the fine pleasures of a few days off (which I had last week) was, at last, having the time and space to savor Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home. Robinson’s two earlier novels, Housekeeping and Gilead (to which Home is intricately related), are among...
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