January 20, 2025

When my sister Kristie started kindergarten, she was small: not just "regular- kindergarten-size" small, but "lunch-box-banging-on-her-shins" small. She was smaller than our 3 year old sister (who was not particularly big herself!). Her classmates towered over her.

One day, during show-and-tell, talk turned to issues of "size." After several unsuccessful attempts to explain the concept of "small," the teacher simply pointed to my sister.

Kristie is small. Small is Kristie.

No words were even necessary.

"No words were necessary?" As a failed Quaker (I needed more words than they offered!), that sounds a little counter-intuitive to me. 

You and I are wordy people.

We have wordy jobs. In fact, "Word" is right there in our job title!

We immerse ourselves in God's Word. As "Ministers of Word and Sacrament," it's our privilege and responsibility to:
   teach the Word,
   pray the Word,
   wrestle with the Word,
   preach the Word, and sometimes even
   sing the Word.

In our sermons, we use words to connect the dots between God's Word and the congregation's lived experience.

Whether our worship services are traditional, contemporary, online, or some blend of all three, we all use words to express our faith, to worship our Lord, to call people to action, and to bless them as they go.

Words upon words upon words...

There's a time and a place for all those words, but there are also passages of God's Word that need no commentary from us or explanation from experts.  There are some passages that simply need to be turned loose and allowed to live.

Yes, that still requires words (unless you are an amazing artist or filmmaker!), but different words....chosen for different reasons.

"Sometimes," as my friend Courtney Krueger said, "a scripture passage just begs, 'Don't talk about me or explain me, bring me to life!'"

Join Rev. Dr. Courtney Krueger (Tennessee-Georgia Presbytery, Chattanooga FCPC) on an imaginative tour (12 minutes) of Psalm 29, and experience close encounters with the wonder, power, majesty, and glory of God!

An Online Learning Opportunity
presented by the Louisa Woosley Preaching Initiative 

Explore the elements of a Christian funeral
and the role of a preacher in it.

This is the 25th issue of the SIx Days 'til Sunday email newsletter. Each week, an average of 325 of you take time to read at least part of it. Louisa and I are grateful for your feedback, your support, and your readership.

If you missed a week, or would like to go back and re-read something, you can find links to all the past issues of "Six Days 'til Sunday" at the bottom of our webpage.

Thank you, again, for going on this journey with us as we explore what it means (and what it takes) to be compelling preachers.

May God bless you as you prepare to preach this week!

--Jen Newell, wordy program director

The Louisa Woosley Preaching Initiative is a grant-funded program of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Our goal is to equip ministers and candidates for ministry to preach compelling sermons to today's diverse and often divided world. 

For more information about the initiative and our programs, visit our website.