by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Sep 3, 2020 | Sermon Illustrations, Work
In this modern day parable, Alan Fadling describes a king and his two servants. Each of the servants desires to do the will of the king, but they approach their work very differently: One of the servants, for fear of not pleasing his master, rose early each day to...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Aug 25, 2020 | Forgiveness, Sermon Illustrations
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Aug 11, 2020 | Hope, Sermon Illustrations
Major Harold Kushner was a prisoner of the Viet Cong for more than five years. Kushner describes one of his fellow American prisoners, a tough twenty-four-year-old Marine who had made a deal with their captors. The Marine agreed to cooperate with the enemy, and in...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Jul 30, 2020 | Death, Life, Sermon Illustrations
An ending can be either good or bad. There are excellent novels that held my attention and moved me for hundreds of pages only to end in a way that made me regret reading the story. Sadly, the same can be said of many “good” lives. It is not enough to live well and...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Jul 21, 2020 | Forgiveness, Friendship, Kindness, Sermon Illustrations
Sometimes moments of forgiveness and friendship come from unexpected places. In 2018, the comedian Pete Davidson appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Davidson made a crude joke about a former Navy Seal turned Congressman-elect Dan...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Jul 14, 2020 | Jesus, Kindness, Sermon Illustrations
I started reading The Kindness of God by Catholic theologian and philosopher Janet Soskice. In her examination of the etymology of the word kindness, Soskice helped me see it for the first time as a strong virtue rather than a weak one. “In Middle English,” she...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Jul 8, 2020 | Church, Community, Ministry, Sermon Illustrations
One of the seductions that continues to bedevil Christian obedience is the construction of utopias, whether in fact or fantasy, ideal places where we can live the good and blessed and righteous life without inhibition or interference. The imagining and attempted...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Jun 30, 2020 | Enslaved, Freedom, Satan, Sermon Illustrations
My grandad told me a story once and that story became a light. A light that unlocks the dark and releases you into the land of a thousand suns. Apparently, so the story went, there had been a tropical snake, longer than the length of a man, that wound its way up the...
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. | Jun 22, 2020 | Book Reviews, Community, Scripture, Spiritual Formation
The Pastor’s Workshop is committed to bringing a variety of voices to this space in an effort to encourage and equip ministry leaders. The following book review is by Kayla Zowada. Kayla currently serves as a civil engineer in Colorado Springs, and in her spare time...
