#4 - Dangers of Christmas
A few years ago the Huffington Post featured an article on the 12 dangers of Christmas. The article focused on fire safety during the holiday season. They covered everything from your Christmas tree drying out and catching the drapes on fire to burning down your home while preparing your roast beast. The article had me thinking, what if there were other dangers during Christmas? What if, aside from falling off your roof while working on your light display and over roasting your chestnuts, there were hidden dangers during the season of advent that most of us overlook. So I decided to write about the dangers of Christmas we often ignore.
Now, a few years later, I want look at a few more dangers of Christmas we might ignore or be unaware of. So here we go, another 12 Dangers of Christmas.
Too Much Exhortation and Too Little Promise in Our Preaching
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Up next on Crackers & Grape Juice is another installment of Friday's With Fleming.
Fleming Rutledge is an ordained Episcopal Priest who expertise resides in the intersection of theology and contemporary culture. She has quickly become a staple on Crackers & Grape Juice due to the way she calls things like she seems them with little to no fluff.
One of the dangers all preachers fall into is what Fleming referred to as too much exhortation and too little promise. Often times when preachers preach we try to prove how much we know and put the $45,000 degrees we're still paying for to use. We've sat through hours upon hours of theology classes and want to share prove how much we know.
So and so said this which means what you use to think is wrong, meaning now I have all the knowledge, and yet I might not believe what I am saying.
The level of exhortation vs promise reminds me of Fleming warning to always end our sermons (and worship services for that matter) with the Gospel proclamation and not a challenge. The challenge then comes when we as preachers have to figure out how to share the Gospel proclamation with large groups of people, on a weekly basis, without sounding redundant. We need to share the Gospel in ways that shows how much we believe what we are saying instead of using the Gospel proclamation to prove how much (or little) we know.
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