Hi friends! It’s been a while since I’ve posted much to this blog. In the last several months, our family has moved and I’ve started a new call/job at First Presbyterian Church in Asheville, NC. So there’s been a lot of settling in, finding out, and getting up to speed. All of that has put blog posting on the back burner.

But things are settling down and finding a rhythm, and it’s time to post again. This summer I am preaching through the letter to the Colossians. Perhaps not the easiest summer preaching agenda, but I had an urge to do it – and I try to follow those urges.

Preaching through a book of the Bible is an ancient preaching practice called lectio continua, a practice the Protestant Reformers also took up. The Reformers’ purpose was to to recover the biblical and theological literacy, and to move away from what had become fashionable in Renaissance preaching, which was to preach topically on a virtue or subject of interest.

Preaching lectio continua takes us into texts we would not otherwise have encountered, and allows us to go deeper into one theological and biblical vein than we ordinarily do. To the preacher and the hearer, that is both challenging and rewarding!