by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Oct 24, 2022 | Identity, The Founder's Desk
There’s a refrain in one of the songs we sing at our church that goes like this “I am who you say I am.” It’s a rather simple line, but a lesson that takes a lifetime to live out. Most of us begin with: “I am who my parents say I...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Jun 25, 2020 | Crisis, Culture, Identity, Judgment, Nations, Sermon Illustrations
All crises are judgments of history that call into question an existing state of affairs. They sift and sort the character and condition of a nation and its capacity to respond. The deeper the crisis, the more serious the sifting and the deeper the questions it...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Jan 21, 2020 | Baptism, Identity, Reconciliation, Sermon Illustrations
Peter Storey, the former Methodist bishop and president of the South African Council of Churches, a white man who opposed apartheid, tells a story about a party at which he and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were the honored guests. It was hosted by black South Africans who...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Dec 27, 2019 | Habits, Identity, Sermon Illustrations
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put it this way. Each of us has what he called a habitus: a set of dispositions to respond more or less spontaneously to the world in particular ways, without much thought. Your habitus is trained into you starting from...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Dec 17, 2019 | Identity, Modern Life, Sermon Illustrations, Storytelling
In his book Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth, Hugh Halter opens with an unlikely scenario: taking his teenage daughter to get her first tattoo. While watching his daughter get “inked,” Halter asked the tattoo artist (named Sean) a very interesting...