Got to Wake Up!

The other day I wrote about being bored by some UU sermons and speeches, describing them as “carefully selected … community wallpaper.” Today, Lively Tradition published a blog post that identified exactly the problem that I have with all these “words.” It isn’t the words themselves, but what the words are not saying. After relating the tendency of UU worships to be places of “refuge” from the rest of the world, LT offers the notion of “preaching for a decision,” a phrase ze* picked up from Methodist co-seminarians.

Instead of using the language of refuge and comfort, we might want to
use the language of decision and commitment. Every week, we are preaching
toward a decision, that individuals will commit themselves, maybe for the first time, and maybe for the 100th time, to live out their sense of the most ultimate next week.

God bless LT. When I’ve written before about “Reader’s Digest” sermons, it’s been with a sense of puzzled frustration because what was being said was nice and true, but often lacking in a direct challenge to my own spirit. Quite honestly, the only sermons and speeches I ever remember are the ones that have either exposed me to an entirely new idea, or have passionately called on me to stretch myself into new territories. I’m naturally inclined towards complacency; I’m counting on my faith community to help me from that.
Read the rest of Lively Tradition’s post, Mission and Worship.

*Ze is a gender neutral pronoun.