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. | Jan 20, 2020 | Uncategorized
Most of us in the United States know the famous “I have a Dream” speech Martin Luther King Jr. gave at the Lincoln Memorial as part of the 1963 March on Washington. On a sweltering, humid day in the nation’s capital, some 250,000 people came to hear King speak on the...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Jan 7, 2020 | Change, Sermon Illustrations
Editor’s Note: The following illustration came from one of my own sermons, as I was trying to help a congregation see itself not as a building, but the body of Christ. It has been adapted for TPW: Now, one of things I’ve realized, even in my own perspective on the...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Dec 31, 2019 | Comfort, Love, Sermon Illustrations
Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are and other children’s books, gets many letters from his young fans. A favorite was a “charming” drawing sent on by a little boy’s mother. “I loved it,” Sendak says. “I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on...
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...
