The rule requires that every Dominican share whenever possible the Gospel of Jesus Christ – for some this will be in sermons or lectures, but there are many ways to proclaim the Gospel.
Our community has tried to keep the work of preaching and teaching central to what every member does (lay or ordained), but even pulpit preachers would be failing to live up to their vows if they only exercised a ministry of proclamation in the pulpit.
How do you carry out the call to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
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To me, the most important 20 - 25 minutes of the entire week is the Sunday Sermon (or Message as we call it here). This is my one shot to really get the Good News across to people. So I take it deadly seriously. I go with Luther. Paraphrase, "If you have to make a choice between the Word and Communion, take the Word."
The Sermon/Message Study Guide we do here puts forward one question for each day of the week, based on the text. So the goal is to try and keep the key points of the message alive and lived out during the week.
Of course, you have to practice what you preach. The meta-theme here is the power of God's grace to transform lives. We work on sharing this truth every day and witnessing it through the way we live. Staff meetings focus on how we are proclaiming and living this out in our various ministries.
Many moons ago when I asked my mentor what he thought to the keys to becoming a great preacher were, he said, "Study the greats (Whitefield, Spurgeon, Edwards, Morgan, etc.), put yourself under the feet of a great preacher for a while . . . but most of all . . . lead a great life."
I try very hard to always set a Godly example when I am working with the youth in the dance studios. I try hard to remind all my friends, family and acquaintances that believing in God and walking with Jesus is the answer to all of life's ups and downs.
I have friends that believe in God, but don't practice a religious lifestyle. With them I am always encouraging them and they are in my prayers.
Brother and Sisters,
I am running this morning on a gallon or so of caffeine. I retunrred at 6am from hospital and the last rites and family turmoil.
Besides the scramnetal prayer, I was able to offer prayer with the family twice. It is amazing how Gospel and Prayer can be so closely linked when we let it.
Or Gospel hope is the Resurrection through Jesus! I prayed for that hope to be real for him and for them.
Other than that I didn't say much. I think I was still preaching.
Guy+
In some manner or another I hope to convey the Gospel message at home, at work, in casual encounters, and at church. To me, the core of the Gospel message is: "God loves you so much that . . ." See, e.g., John 3:16, which Luther called the Gospel in miniature. If I can start my day acknowledging my love for our Lord and thanking him for putting that love in my heart, I bring more joy to my day and the mere presence of that joy in someone who is openly a Christian will, I hope, encourage others to explore their own faith.
More explicitly, I share my faith openly with co-workers and ask them to share theirs with me. I try to work in Scripture references whenever I give talks to my staff. I teach Bible Studies and other Christian formation classes both on Sundays and on weekdays and I invite and encourage co-workers to attend. I take part in an ecumenical men's Bible study at work and share my faith at those sessions. If a co-worker share his or her Christian faith with me, I try to help that person be accountable for that profession of faith both by encouraging that faith and by occasional reminders if behaviors, such as excessive negativity at work, or expressions of malice toward other employees, is not consistent with the teachings of Christian faith.
At home I talk to my wife about my faith as much as she will tolerate, and I try to be mindful that how I live my faith with her is a much more important component of my witness to her than is what I say to her.
Finally, I do love it when opportunities come along to talk about faith with strangers. In prison ministry this happens all the time of course, but every so often someone will give you a conversational opening, too. A few weeks ago I was in the airport in the Solomon Islands and I was sitting at a table near a snack bar. A young Australian woman came to the table and asked if she could sit in an empty seat at the table. After she sat down we began chatting. I asked her what she did and what brought her to the Solomons, and she told me she worked in community development with the Seventh Day Adventists. I said, oh, so you are a missionary. She said, well, no, we don't do any real evangelizing. I told her that I considered the kind of work she was doing to be missionary for several reasons, including the fact that her mere presence in the islands conveyed a portion of the gospel message of God's generouse love.
God puts people in our path from time to time whom we can bless by sharing with them, who bless us by sharing with us, or both.
I am still working thru the way my new Dominican identity works with this. This is not to say that by becoming Dominican I suddenly need to change how I minister, but it does speak to a perhaps different emphasis and opportunity.
I love a good sermon Br Jerry and am easily distracted by a bad one, but I find by the time the creed is over I am over the bad sermon, although I still try to find something to take with me. A "bad Eucharist" on the other hand is not so easily overcome for me as it is the focus of why I am in church.
At various points in my life I have been in attendance at non-sacramental churches if you will where the entire service was built around the sermon. When I found the Episcopal Church and by extension Anglicanism, I was home. The symbolism and the function of the liturgy, starting with The Word and Moving to Holy Communion were my new focus. I could quite frankly do without a sermon/homily and be just fine at a mass.
So in my mind, my opportunities to preach in the formal setting of a Eucharist or Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer are to point to the receiving of the elements of communion.
Forgive me if we crossed here on semantics.
Br Carl
Again, i think we have to look at context. Most of my flock here were un-churched or de-churched. Quite a few of the others - all of the Black folk -- come from Baptist type backgrounds. So the vast majority of them don't have any under understanding of or much interest in the Eucharist. The big issue for most of them is they have problems/brokenness in their lives and they're looking for answers and perhaps God might, emphasis on might, have an answer. So i treat it like we did with the Maasai in Africa (for whom bread and wine are not part of their culture and have no meaning and not available anyhow) . . . we'll eventually get to it. But right now we're taking the first steps on a long journey.
For me delivering a sermon every week is a large part of what we're talking about and I take it very seriously. Even though there may be only a handful in church to hear it, you'd think I'd prepared for thousands. Perhaps I do, the saints gathered. Anyway, there are a couple of my little parishoners who don't have too many sermons left to hear and each one is very important for them. I feel a huge responsibility for them; and in one case I feel like I'm honoring her late husband who was a pastor. On another track, the sermon prep and Bible study oozes out during the week. For example: I was visiting with an inmate who had a tag on his shirt saying "I am forgiven." I asked him about the tag and gave him an opportunity to witness to me. It so happened I had been working with Matthew 18:21-35 (I think) and asked him if he'd looked at it lately. This sort of conversation was encouraging and supportive for both of us. In addition, I think that others who know we are "church people" watch us closely. No telling who we encourage vicariously along the way.
Brother Jerry,
Thanks so much for clarifying for me. It had never dawned on me the context in which you minister (nor Br Phil either for that matter). I love to preach and love the prep work involved. I certainly fell short in my first post of the need for an effective proclamation of the Word in order to prepare for the proclamation of the Eucharist.
I certainly meant no disrespect (and do not mean to imply any was taken either) and am enriched by the situation of others. Sometimes I easily take my middle aged white guy middle class perspective and lose the peripheral.
I am continuously humbled by the experiences of the brothers and sisters in the order and thank God for leading me to all of you.
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