Preaching in Class and hammering away . . .

We had preaching-time in class again yesterday. I didn't take good pictures, but I share what I have. The assignment this round was to preach a "special day" sermon. We opened with Matt Scholl who preached a Palm Sunday sermon entitled, "King for a Day." He did a good job building the case that being king for a day wouldn't be all that fun, or good. Scott Layer's special ocassion was a sermon for the first Sunday at a new church (he doesn't know where he will be assigned after this year). He shared some of his own story in the sermon and tied it nicely to the call of the gospel.
Nolan "Rocks" Donald preached a funeral sermon, which led to the best discussion of the day. It was helpful to hear how Dr. Kalas handled funerals--especially ones that were tricky. Anyone who has spent time preaching knows that funerals can be easy or tough depending upon things like how well the preacher knew the deceased and how well the deceased appears to have known God. Nolan's sermon was good on it's own, but I especially want to thank him for choosing that category of sermons.
Faithful readers of the blog may wonder who the next guy is. I haven't mentioned him yet. He's like the last Brady Bunch kid, Nicolas, the blonde cousin who went to live with the Brady family after the regular kids got old. I knew readers of this blog would be bored with us by now, so I saved this guy for last.

Scott Wright is a Beeson Pastor, but not one of The Twelve. He is a campus minister in Louisiana who comes to town for the preaching class every now and again. He is finishing up the program from afar. Don't ask me the details, because I can't give them to you. It has something to do with an in-ministry track of the Beeson program that they used to offer, don't offer now, but will offer again soon.

Anyway . . . he preached on what it means to take the biblical concept of covenant seriously (in the ministry), using the Israelite tribes that remained in the Trans-Jordan as an example. He is an effective speaker. It was good to have him with us.
Other than that, we aren't spending much time in the classroom over the next month. We have a nice, big, block of time to work on papers and books and dissertation. That means I will need to be disciplined in order to make good use of this time.

Since you are bored enough to be reading this far into a blog, I ask you to take a little extra time to pray for us. The whole year will be better if we use this time wisely. Seriously. You can take a couple of minutes right now. . . shoot, it doesn't even have to be a couple of minutes.

Peace and Thanks!