What more can I say? After 15 years and something like 700 sermons what could be left to talk about? That is the question I have been wrestling with the last month as I consider my final sermon series at Hope Church. The truth is that there are another 700 sermons I could preach, but Pastor David will take up that charge soon enough. So, for my final eight scheduled sermons I have decided to use a new text. I preached on Numbers only three times but I have always been fascinated by it as the perfect text to summarize what I hoped to accomplish during my call as your Preacher and Pastor. In 2009, I made some humorous, mostly clumsy attempts to describe my understanding of Hope Church as a Pilgrim Community of Hope, a community of believers and seekers walking toward the Cross and being sent from the Cross into the world. We are a community helping each other to find our way Home. That theme underlies just about all 700 sermons I have preached. Why change now? So, as you will see in the linked pdf below, we will spend the summer considering A Long Walk Home: Wilderness Lessons for a Pilgrim Community. More than sermons, these ‘talks’ will be my opportunity to reflect with you about what God has done for us and through us. My remarks will be more like a ‘love letter’ to a community of people I have grown to love as brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. I expect that they may be shorter (no promises!) than you are used to hearing me preach. While I believe that 20-ish minutes is the ideal sermon length, maybe if I cut the time down to 15 minutes it will help us focus on the essentials God is teaching from the wilderness walk of Israel.
