My Preaching
I’ve been preaching somewhat regularly since 2009. From then until sometime in 2012, I preached occasionally in The Gathering at the United Church of Christ, Congregational in Medina, Ohio. Beginning in 2012, I also preached in a variety of congregations around the United States on behalf of Back Bay Mission. I also provided pulpit supply.
In 2018, I became the pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ in DeWitt, Iowa. Since then, I’ve preached almost exclusively to that congregation.
I used to preach from manuscripts, but stopped using manuscripts and written notes in early 2023. I also used to preach from lectionary texts—I’ve used both the Revised Common Lectionary and the Narrative Lectionary—but moved to doing sermon series in mid-2023. You can find some of my older manuscript sermons on the First Congregational website. You can also find videos of my sermons on First Congregational’s YouTube Channel.
On this site, I have my sermon series since I started using that method in 2023. You can find links to videos of the different series below.
Broken
November 19, 2023 to December 24, 2023
The Christian story starts with a premise and a problem. The premise is that the world is created and sustained by a God who is love. The problem is that the world does not reflect that love. The Christian word for that brokenness—that distance between the way that the world is and the way that the world ought to be—is sin.
God Is…
October 8, 2023 to November 5, 2023
It’s easy to imagine God as an angry man who lives in the sky, makes a bunch of arbitrary rules, and then punishes people like you and me for breaking them. And that is a God who a lot of people preach, and who a lot of people believe in, and who a lot of people fear, and who a lot of people reject. But it is not a God who I recognize; because the God who I know—who I find in scripture and tradition—is love.
Stories & Maps
September 10, 2023 to October 1, 2023
We all tell stories. We tell stories about ourselves and about others. We tell stories about the way that the world is and the way that it could be; and—probably more than we'd like to admit—those stories make up our reality. In this series, I talk about the stories that we tell, the stories that other people tell for us, and how we might start telling a better story.