Rabbi. Radical. Redeemer. Risen Lord.: Sermons from the 2017 National Festival of Young Preachers

By Dwight A. Moody

The public narrative about religion in America warns of loss and decline. But the young men and women voicing their convictions in this book tell a different story. They gathered in Lexington, Kentucky, in January of 2017 to preach at the National Festival of Young Preachers. This printed version of their words of hope and transformation is the eighth in this series bringing together the young and talented from all traditions of the Christian community. Read this volume of sermons. Collect all eight volumes. Stud?y? their words and vocation. Renew your hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chalice Press
• Release date: Sep 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9780827233096

Book preview

National Festival of Young Preachers Sermon Series

Dwight A. Moody, general editor

A Beautiful Thing

Sermons from the Inaugural Festival of Young Preachers (2010)

Lee Huckleberry, editor

Waking to the Holy

Sermons from the 2011 Festival of Young Preachers (2011)

Lee Huckleberry, editor

Uncommon Sense

Jesus and the Renewal of the World (2012)

Dwight A. Moody, editor

Gospel and the City

Sermons from the 2013 Festival of Young Preachers (2013)

Dwight A. Moody, editor

Questions of the Soul

Sermons from the 2014 Festival of Young Preachers (2014)

S. Thomas Valentine, editor

Pentecost on Mockingbird Lane

Sermons from the 2015 Festival of Young Preachers (2015)

Tamara K. Gieselman and Mitchell C. Gieselman, editors

Heaven and Earth

Sermons from the 2016 Festival of Young Preachers (2016)

Dwight A. Moody, editor

Rabbi. Radical. Redeemer. Risen Lord.

Sermons from the 2017 Festival of Young Preachers (2017)

Dwight A. Moody, editor

Copyright

Copyright ©2017 by the Academy of Preachers.

All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact the Academy of Preachers, 150 East High Street, Lexington, Kentucky, 40507, www.academyofpreachers.net.

Scripture quotations are from several translations. Scriptures from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations from the King James Version are in public domain. Quotations from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Quotations from the New American Bible with Revised Psalms and Revised New Testament, copyright © 1986, 1991 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 3211 Fourth Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20017. All rights reserved. The text of the Old Testament in the New American Bible with Revised Psalms and Revised New Testament was published in the New American Bible, copyright © 1970 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (Books from 1 Samuel to 2 Maccabees inclusive copyright © 1969). All rights reserved. Quoations from the Common English Bible. Copyright ©2012. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Quotations from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®). ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. Quotations from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC All Rights Reserved. Quotations from The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society. All rights reserved.

Cover art: Ike Moody, copyright ©2017 by Ike Moody. All rights reserved.

Used with permission.

Cover and interior design: Hui-Chu Wang

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Dedication

Dedicated

to the inspirational and influential preacher of the gospel

William Augustus Jones, Jr.

1934-2006

Historic Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church, Lexington, Kentucky

Bethany Baptist Church, Brooklyn, New York

Contents

National Festival of Young Preachers Sermon Series

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

1: The Radical Jesus

2: The Radical Perspective of Jesus Christ

3: Stone No More

4: Can These Dry Bones Live?

5: The Adulterous Woman

6: The Emmaus Road

7: Revolutionary Rabbi

8: Who Is This Jesus?

9: Unwrapping the Gift of God

10: In Need of Remindin’

11: Jesus’ Strategy for Ministry

12: Loving All the People

13: Take It to the Garden

14: Strange Fruit: The Gospel of Prophetic Grief

15: Redemption

16: Jesus’ Birth is Our Lens for Unity

17: Calling You by Name

18: We Found Love in a Hopeless Place

19: A Sinful Woman Forgiven

20: Our Only Hope

21: Rise Up

22: Living by Grace

23: From Judgment to Justification

24: Get Up and Go!

25: I Am Divine

26: Light of the World

27: Justice in the House of God

28: Do This in Remembrance

29: Teach Me How to Love

30: When Jesus Stops the Chaos

31: The Gospel According to Jesus

32: The Christ in Our Chaos

33: Radical Power

34: Is This My Story?

35: Jesus: Radical Redeemer

36: Realizing the Radical

37: A Radical New Definition of Greatness

38: Feed My Sheep

39: Healing Together

40: The Arrow of God

41: Are You Dancing?

42: Covered in the Dust

43: But I Say unto You

44: The Birth of Jesus

45: The Gospel of the Lord

46: Throwing out the Shoes

47: Weaning off Worry

48: Is the Power of a Story Enough?

49: Accept or Decline

50: How Jesus the Radical is Your Rabbi and Redeemer

51: Moments and Movements

52: Going All Out: Learning to be Comfortable in Your Discomfort

53: And Jesus Sang

54: Revelations and Revolutions

55: Jesus’ Pathetic Love Strategy

56: Where is Your Oil?

57: Jesus the Risen Lord: The Embodiment of Hope

58: Battle Ready, Spiritually Fortified!

59: Wake Up!

60: Time is Up!

61: Preaching Jesus

62: Jesus the Redeemer

63: Jesus is Redeemer

64: Rescued from Routine, Reconciled to the Radical

65: Rabbi, Radical, Redeemer and Risen Lord

66: Learning from Jesus

67: I Am among You as One Who Serves

68: Tell Your Story

69: I Love to Tell the Story

70: The Great Reversal

71: The Dream of God

Contributors

Academy of Preachers

Foreword

Jennifer Jones Austin

When I received an invitation to take part in the Academy of Preachers’ 2017 National Festival of Young Preachers, I accepted without hesitation. Being a leader of faith but not a faith leader, I’d never been to a festival of preaching. I was enticed by the conference’s focus on helping young Christian preachers perfect their preaching gifts.

As the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Baptist ministers and as the chief executive officer of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, a faith-based, anti-poverty policy and advocacy organization, I arrived at the conference with an experientially informed perspective on preaching and ministry in a country ravaged with inequality and inequity. I was eager to learn how young preachers are embracing their callings in this seemingly never-ending state of affairs. My father, the late Rev. Dr. William Augustus Jones, Jr., during his nearly 50 years of preaching on every continent in both world-renowned cathedrals and stadiums and storefront and back-road country churches, had, in my humble opinion, mastered the work of social justice ministry. You can’t talk religion to a hungry man, he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1963. No, you have to minister to both his earthly physical needs and to his need for spiritual salvation.

I was invited to the Festival by Dr. Dwight A. Moody to share with attendees my beliefs about how our Christian faith demands of us that our ministries be social justice oriented, not prosperity driven, and how my faith informs my daily work on behalf of vulnerable and marginalized communities. My words of caution to the young and faithful gathered there were well received—that their ministries embrace the parable of Jesus in Matthew 25: that by not doing good to the poor and needy, and by not helping the imprisoned and the homeless, Christians are not being Christ-like and are unfit for the kingdom; and that we shall be condemned for neglecting our duties to all of mankind.

Even though I consider it an honor to have been a speaker, the recurring highlight of the conference for me was hearing others present. In particular, hearing young preachers deliver their sermons was a blessing that repeated over and over. I grew up watching my father prepare and deliver his sermons with intentionality. Cited as one of America’s top preachers on more than one occasion and as a dean of great preaching, Dad took preaching responsibly. He even wrote and delivered a sermon entitled Responsible Preaching in which he admonishes preachers to preach the gospel pure and free, to not be restrained by government or religion, and to speak truth to power as God purposed them to do. I came to the Festival hoping to hear some responsible preaching, and I wasn’t disappointed!

Over four days, preachers of different races and ethnicities from states across the country and as young as 15 years of age preached the gospel pure and free. It was gratifying and reassuring to see so many young people honoring God and his calling upon their lives by seeking to grow and strengthen their sermon skills. Listening to and watching young preachers hone their individual voices and styles, which were varied and nuanced, while being ever mindful that their message was most important was, for me, encouraging. In today’s faith communities, pure, unadulterated preaching is not easily found. But not so at the Festival. The young persons gathered demonstrated an appreciation that if the preaching of the gospel is your singular focus, it can and will powerfully stand on its own.

As my father once wrote:

History’s ledger shows that cultural disintegration is a corollary of irresponsible preaching. A decline in the pulpit is a sure sign of social decay. And one of the ironies of the whole bit of this—the worse the social order becomes, the more compatible the preacher and the politician become.

Thank God for the Academy of Preachers’ National Festival of Young Preachers, which is singlehandedly doing its part to ensure against such a decline!

Introduction

by Dwight A. Moody

Rabbi. Radical. Redeemer. Risen Lord. is volume eight in the collection of sermons preached at the National Festivals of Young Preachers, hosted by the Academy of Preachers. The first Festival was in 2010 in Louisville, Kentucky; the Festivals have been held each January since then, with this current volume containing sermons from the 2017 National Festival in Lexington, Kentucky. While I have served as general editor of this series and volume editor for four of the eight books, I have been joined in this editorial work by three people: Lee Huckleberry¹ edited the first two books, A Beautiful Thing and Waking to the Holy; S. Thomas Valentine² edited volume five, Questions of the Soul; and Tamara Gieselman³ and Mitchell Gieselman⁴ edited volume six, Pentecost on Mockingbird Lane. Chalice Press has been the publisher of all eight of these volumes.⁵

The 68 sermons in this volume join the 441 other sermons in the series to constitute the most comprehensive archive of what young Christian leaders in America are thinking and voicing. I am not aware of any other collection that rivals this in terms of ecumenical breadth, as these volumes include the sermons of Evangelical, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Protestant, and Roman Catholic preachers. The immediate and the long-term value of this collection of 509 sermons cannot be overstated; but as yet, it has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. In fact, there has been very little research given to young Christian voices. I note here the one scholarly publication on the subject, that by AoP friend and PhD graduate of Vanderbilt University Rich Voelz and his published dissertation, Youthful Preaching: Strengthening the Relationship Between Youth, Adults, and Preaching.⁶ Dr. Voelz in now assistant professor of homiletics at Virginia Union Seminary in Richmond, Virginia.

National Festival of Young Preachers

The 2017 National Festival of Young Preachers, hosted by the Academy of Preachers (AoP) at the Embassy Suites in Lexington, Kentucky, was, like the seven that preceded it, focused on young people discerning or embracing a decision to prepare for full-time Christian ministry. The target audience has always been those between the ages of 14 and 28, but we have allowed both younger and older persons to participate. In 2016, we added a Festival track for those between the ages of 29 and 36 that we call First Parish Preachers. We did this in response to persistent requests from those in that age range as well as those who had been active in AoP but had, as we say, aged out. Other than this group of older preachers, Festival participants were assigned to prayer circles and preaching venues without effort to segregate them by age or tradition; in fact, we made explicit efforts to promote diversity in both the circles and the venues. Year after year, the participants record their assessment of the Festivals and consistently voice their appreciation for the ecumenical diversity of the experience.

Each Festival carries a preaching theme with accompanying biblical texts, and we expect each Young Preacher to engage one of the selected texts, although we have no response if some Young Preacher deviates from this expectation. The preaching themes for these eight National Festivals have been:

• 2010: Jesus

• 2011: Ten Commandments

• 2012: Sermon on the Mount

• 2013: Gospel and the City

• 2014: Questions of the Soul

• 2015: Tell Me a Story

• 2016: Heaven and Earth

• 2017: Jesus

While some of the biblical texts for these themes are fairly obvious (Ten Commandments, for instance, and Sermon on the Mount), others are not so, such as Gospel and the City; texts for this 2013 theme were drawn from the entire Bible and arranged into four categories: Preaching Gospel in the City, Doing Justice in the City, Making Home in the City, and Finding Hope in the City. For the preaching theme Questions of the Soul, we selected 52 biblical questions of the approximately 2,550 questions in the biblical literature. For the 2017 National Festival, the theme of Jesus was expanded by four words: Rabbi, Radical, Redeemer, and Risen Lord, and no specific biblical texts were identified.

The Young Preachers are encouraged to engage the assistance of a preaching mentor and, in fact, to be accompanied to the Festival and introduced by this mentor when they stand to preach. Furthermore, each Young Preacher is expected to use a Bible translation of their preference and interpret the text in ways consistent with either their tradition or their personal convictions; our desire is that each Young Preacher finds his or her voice. A maximum of 15 minutes is allowed for each sermon, and no preference is given to the mode of presentation (manuscript, notes, or extemporaneous). We do encourage these Young Preachers to submit a manuscript version of their Festival sermon, and approximately two-thirds of them do so.

2017 Festival Preachers

Of the 107 Young Preachers who preached at the 2017 National Festival of Young Preachers, 68 submitted sermons for inclusion in this book. All the sermons submitted this year are included (although this is not always the case, as occasionally a sermon is submitted in such abbreviated form that we find it unusable). Ordinarily, two-thirds of the Young Preachers at any given National Festival are attending their first preaching festival; we signify this with the suffix AoP’17 or AoP’14 to indicate at which National Festival a Young Preacher first preached. For instance, the first sermon in this book is Radical Jesus by Matthew Abel AoP’15, which means he first preached at the National Festival in 2015 in Dallas, Texas. Forty-nine of the sermons in this volume (or 72 percent) were preached and submitted by Young Preachers attending their first National Festival (who will henceforth will carry the designation AoP’17); the rest are from those who first preached in 2011 (3), 2012 (2), 2013 (2), 2014 (2), 2015 (4), and 2016 (6).

We customarily designate our constituency as representing Evangelical, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Protestant, and Roman Catholic (as we did above), but it is not always easy to identify which Young Preacher falls in which category. For Orthodox and Roman Catholic, it is easy; but for this 2017 Festival we had not a single Orthodox Young Preacher, the first time this has happened. But 2017 in Lexington registered the largest number of Roman Catholics ever at an AoP National Festival (12, coming from three schools: Notre Dame University and St. Meinrad Seminary, both in Indiana; and St. Mary’s Seminary in Cincinnati). Even 12 Roman Catholic participants does not justly reflect the national percentage of preachers who are Roman Catholic; in other words, Roman Catholics are severely under-represented in our National Festivals. Furthermore, all who come are seminary students and thus older than the median age of National Festival participants (22 years); we have not yet discovered a way to access those younger persons in the Roman Catholic tradition who are headed toward the priesthood.⁷

Of the 68 Young Preachers published in this book, we identify 39 (or 57 percent) as Protestant. That figure can be misleading, because many African American denominations fall into Evangelical in some regard and into Protestant in others; and the United Methodist Church has people in both traditions. So our Asbury Seminary students all identify as United Methodist Church and thus fall into the Protestant category when, in fact, many of them are more Evangelical. Another 15 Young Preachers (or 22 percent) we designate as Evangelical, and that includes those from the Anglican and non-denominational schools or churches. Seven of the Young Preachers in this volume (or 10 percent) register as Roman Catholic; four (or 6 percent) are from Pentecostal traditions, including Full Gospel Baptists. Finally, three self-identify as other, including one Quaker.

The average age of these 68 Young Preachers is 23, slightly above the eight-year norm, with the 17 college-age students from Lindsey Wilson College (the most ever from a single school) balancing out the seven Roman Catholics, whose average age was 28. Of these 28 Young Preachers, 44 (or 65 percent) are male, slightly above our Festival figures of 37 females out of 107 total Festival preachers.

2017 Festival Sermons 

From time to time, we have made cursory assessment of the sermons preached at the National Festival, but these evaluations have never been sophisticated enough or properly sustained over time, given the value of this material. Dr. Voelz’s book cited above, Youthful Preaching, is a wonderful example of how such texts can be analyzed to great profit. We keep hoping other scholars will take up this AoP material and give it the level of serious attention that Voelz gave his 13 YouTube sermons. But for now, I will offer some introductory analysis of these sermons and do so by asking three questions.

• First, how do these 68 Young Preachers appropriate Jesus?

• Second, how do these Young Preachers integrate stories in their preaching?

• And finally, what kind of appeal is explicit or implied in these sermons?

My choice of these questions arises from my own teaching of preaching over time at Georgetown College (1997-2008) and once upon a time (fall of 2016) at Asbury University. My students were all college age, and thus the class was as much a course in public speaking as it was in homiletics. Out of this experience I developed my own list of Nine Marks of a Good Sermon, eventually publishing it in 2015 under the Academy of Preachers Books imprint.⁸ These nine marks are:

• A good sermon arises naturally from a biblical text;

• A good sermon develops one essential idea;

• A good sermon responds to the needs of the audience;

• A good sermon includes at least one story;

• A good sermon asks at least one question;

• A good sermon makes use of at least one metaphor;

• A good sermon expresses the passion of the preacher;

• A good sermon includes some part of the Jesus story;

• A good sermon makes a clear appeal.

Of these nine marks, I selected three for this analysis: attention to Jesus, use of stories, and the nature of the sermon’s appeal. The inquiry about Jesus arises naturally from the preaching theme promoted for this 2017 National Festival—Jesus: Rabbi. Radical. Redeemer. Risen Lord. All the Young Preachers except two took this theme seriously and developed a sermon around the life, death, or resurrection of Jesus.⁹ Quite naturally, most of the Young Preachers were influenced by the preaching theme, and many of them made explicit use of one or more of these four words: rabbi, radical, redeemer, risen Lord.

Twenty-five of these Young Preachers (or 37 percent) presented Jesus primarily as a Radical, offering an example for us to follow; a good example is the social justice sermon based on Luke 19 and Wisdom 11 by the Roman Catholic preacher Bridget Carey AoP’17.

Another 15 Young Preachers (22 percent of the whole) invoked primarily Jesus as Redeemer; and the sermon by Lindsey Wilson College student Josh Durham AoP’17 offers an excellent example of how a personal experience of redemption from a life of sin shapes the way we appropriate Jesus for others.

Only 11 of the Young Preachers (or 18 percent) took Jesus as Risen Lord as the focal point of their sermons; Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School student Stefan Weathers AoP’17 preached such a sermon, inspired by Matthew 25:31-46 and consisting almost entirely of an extended parable.

Seven Young Preachers (or 10 percent) resonated with Jesus as a Rabbi; but among them was Melissa George AoP’17, a student at Asbury Seminary, whose sermon based on John 8:12 emphasized Jesus’ teaching on the light of the world. Many of these Young Preachers invoked more than one of these titles for their homiletic Jesus, and four actually and explicitly referred to all four of them; such was the excellent sermon on Matthew 26:26-30 by Brittany Stephan AoP’14, a student at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary.

Another avenue of assessing the role of Jesus in these sermons is to determine whether Jesus is used as authority, as example, as agent, or merely as adornment. When Jesus is used as authority, his words or deeds are quoted to justify some action or attitude. The Jesus in the sermon by Wesley Buckley AoP’17perfectly illustrates this invocation of Jesus: We who are striving to glorify God in ministry need to be a little bit more like Jesus in how we do ministry. Of the 68 sermons in this book, 21 (or 31 percent) fall into this category.

When Jesus is presented as an example, some episode from his life is recounted to illustrate a desired behavior or response. Consider, for instance, these sentences in the sermon by Rachel Escamilla AoP’17: When God calls us to action, we can look to Joseph to see how to respond. Joseph, when called by God, got up and went! He did as God commanded. Likewise, Jesus, throughout his life, followed the call and will of God. Eighteen of the 68 sermons (or 26 percent) fall primarily into this category.

When Jesus is invoked as agent, Jesus is projected as the presence or power effecting change. The Jesus in the sermon of Brittany Barkus AoP’17, The Emmaus Road, is just this agent of change, which she makes clear when she asserts that He comes to dwell and abide but also to transform our roads, just as he did with the two disciples. Barkus’ sermon is one of 19 in this book (or 28 percent) that presents Jesus primarily as an agent of change.

Some use Jesus merely as adornment, invoking Jesus for its emotional effect. I sense this is the case in the sermon by Noah Duncan AoP’17. Jesus is not invoked until the very end: Go out into the battlefield of this world just as Jesus did and spread the love of Christ to one person at a time. He was one of seven Young Preachers (which is 10 percent of the whole) who relegated Jesus to such a place in the sermon. And another three sermons have an even more limited role for Jesus, including one that did not mention Jesus at all in the sermon!

On the question of stories, I noted at the beginning that these stories were of three kinds: a biblical story, a personal story, and/or a story from some other source, such as from a movie or the news. I am glad to report that 54 of these 68 sermons (or 79 percent) included a story, and 17 of them (or a full 25 percent) actually incorporated more than one story. Jordan Abell AoP’16, in fact, included three stories in his sermon: a biblical story about the calling of Matthew and two other stories, neither of them from his own personal experience— a narrative about the development of the standard railway gauge and a story drawn from the writings and speeches of Tony Campolo.

This leaves 14 of these 68 sermons (or 21 percent) with no story at all, making them heavy on analysis and short on imagination. Exceptions to this rule are many African American sermons, including those by Milton Keys AoP’16, JaParis Xavier Key AoP’16, and Darien Jones AoP’15, each of whom cultivates imagination in ways other than telling a story.

Almost half of these sermons (31 of 68, or 46 percent) are structured around a story from the Bible—generally the story told in the selected text—and almost always about Jesus. Using Jesus as a preaching theme obviously pushed these preachers in that direction. Kendall Adams, AoP’16, for instance, retold the narrative of the woman caught in adultery and brought to Jesus. In fact, the retelling of this story constitutes essentially the entire sermon, entitled Stone No More and ending with a wonderful repetitive appeal:

Put down the story of hate and pick up the stone of love.

Put down the stone of bigotry and pick up wisdom.

Put down the stone of greed and pick up sacrifice.

Put down the stone of violence and pick up peace.

Put down the stone unforgiveness and pick up reconciliation.

Put down the stone of haughtiness and pick up humility.

Put down the stone of unbelief and gain faith.

Twenty-three of these 68 sermons (34 percent) incorporate some personal narrative. Many of these Young Preachers are not aware of the sharp debate among homileticans about this practice.¹⁰ And some of these Young Preachers in their 2017 Festival sermons provide (in my judgment) too much personal detail or focus too much attention on themselves. One gets the decided impression that the sermon was functioning to assist the young minister in processing the impact or meaning of the experience. Nevertheless, excellent examples of the use of personal stories in a sermon are A Sinful Woman Forgiven, by Genevieve Dornemann AoP’17, wherein she incorporated a worship scene she witnessed, and Is This My Story? preached by Michael King AoP’17.

Only one-quarter of the Young Preachers (17 of 68) incorporated stories from the wider range of material: literature, history, media, news, etc. The most original and unique was that by famed storyteller David Benning AoP’14, who fashioned the entire biblical narrative of Jesus into a first-person monologue set in the historical context of the first century Roman Empire. In that way it functioned to include both a biblical story and an historical narrative melded into one. Josh Durham AoP’17, in his sermon, Living by Grace, incorporated the story of Beyoncé’s recent album Lemonade.

Finally, we come to the question of appeal, and this also has been a matter of dispute among preachers, focusing upon the question of whether or not persuasion—so closely related to appeal—is at the heart of the homiletic intent. Robert Reid, in his perceptive book The Four Voices of Preaching,¹¹ identifies four responses anticipated by the preacher and sorts most American preaching into one of these four categories:

• the inspirational response of Let this happen to me;

• the conversational response of I like your story; now let me tell you my story;

• the sage response of What shall I do with this?

• the doctrinal response of This is what I believe.

I read through these 68 sermons with these four categories in mind. It is too early in their vocational journey for these Young Preachers to have developed a personal approach to the homiletic appeal; but the various ways these Young Preachers construct and deliver their messages reflect the homiletic community in which they were formed as well as the early shape of their homiletic imagination. Within this context, I note that 30 of the 68 preachers (or 44 percent) anticipated the inspirational response from the listeners. That is, the natural response of the listener to the way the appeal was presented was to say, Wow, that is great, and I want it to happen to me! Surprisingly, 34 percent of the sermons (or 22 of the 68) fell into the sage category, with the anticipated hearer response of, Hmmm. What shall I do with this? This is surprising because Reid gathers the fewest number of seasoned preachers into this category. This high percentage among these Young Preachers may reflect their inability to fashion an appeal of any kind, leaving their message hanging and their hearers wondering. It is entirely likely that very few of these Young Preachers have ever been forced to answer the basic question: What response do you want from your listeners as a result of this sermon? In fact, it is highly likely than many seasoned preachers have given this question far too little attention.

The minority of these Young Preachers delivered their sermons anticipating either the conversational response (10 percent, or seven of 68 sermons) or the doctrinal response (13 percent, or nine of 68 sermons). A good example of the former is We Found Love in a Hopeless Place by Grace Dietz AoP’17, and of the latter, From Judgment to Justification by Ashley Edwards AoP’17.

Reflections on these Sermons

As a preacher myself, it is only fitting that my summary comments are three-fold. First, these sermons contain a strong personal element, using their own experiences both to testify to their convictions and call and also to interpret the gospel and Christian living. The storehouse of knowledge and illustration for such interpretation is limited, since many of these Young Preachers are still in college; this pushes them to explore their own journeys for ways to think about Jesus Christ and gospel work in the world. 

Second, our preaching theme for 2017 (and this book) allows these Young Preachers to demonstrate the prominent role that Jesus plays in their Christian and homiletic imaginations. Only one of these sermons fails to mention Jesus; most are dominated by the words and deeds of Jesus. These young Christian leaders want to know Jesus, follow Jesus, serve Jesus, and preach Jesus.

Finally, I state a conviction I have made many times over the last few years—namely, that speech events such as these preaching festivals are powerful and compelling strategies for helping young Christian leaders clarify how they hear and interpret the voice of God into their own experience and journey. Not many managers of youth and young adult discernment programs operate as if this is true, but here in these sermons (and in much more research AoP has done over the years), young Christian people speak forcefully and authentically of their encounter with God, their dedication to Jesus, and their commitment to gospel work. What more could we ask of any youth event?

1: The Radical Jesus

Galatians 2:19-20

Matthew Abel

I love the theme of this year’s National Festival: Jesus: Rabbi. Radical. Redeemer. Risen Lord. The first reason I love that theme is that it is alliteration, and if there’s one thing pastors are addicted to besides Jesus that it’s alliteration (and acronyms). The second reason I love it is that it sounds like the name of a good movie or novel, like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. That made me wonder: What if I were to make a movie about one of these aspects of Jesus’ life? Specifically, what would it be like if I made a movie about Jesus: Radical? How would I do that in a fresh way?

I could have scenes of Jesus touching lepers, saving adulterous women, eating with sinners, associating with tax collectors, turning over tables, calling out the Pharisees. Jesus’ power and majesty were proclaimed by a group of Zoroastrian priests before he was out of kindergarten! There are so many radical scenes in Jesus’ life it would be near impossible to condense them into one film. You may have heard sermons that look at those aspects of Jesus the Radical.

Have you seen the film Romeo and Juliet—the crazy one with Leonardo DiCaprio? It’s a crazy movie, but it does a good job of taking an old story and telling it in a modern setting with modern props and situations. What if I made Jesus: Radical that way?

I’d have a scene where Jesus eats dinner with a Muslim family, one where he calls felons and illegal immigrants to follow him, one where he talks to a hooker. I’d have him heal a drug addict. I’d even have this really controversial scene where he shows up at denominational gatherings to give today’s church leaders an earful. I can picture it all: the movie would be spectacular. I’d have only problem: casting.

Who will play Jesus in my movie? Who can I get to imitate the ways, words, and actions of a first-century Jewish rabbi on the streets of Chicago or Aleppo, in Africa and Asia, or in the hills and hollers of Kentucky? Who can play the starring role and show the entire world just how radical Jesus Christ was? The more I thought about it, the more daunting the task seemed; it is just too big a role for one human being to pull off.

You may be thinking: Matt, where are you going with this? What’s the point of this crazy extended metaphor? The point is, this is exactly what God has called us to do. Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy said, Jesus does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him. Or, as our scripture from Galatians says, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. When