I was reminded this week by a colleague that prophetic preachers approach both sermon-writing and ministries with the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper, or in my case, the smartphone, in the other. I mean, otherwise, we are too tempted to preach feel-good messages in a vacuum, sermons that have no ability to prepare you think theologically about the world’s problems, sermons that leave you ill equipped to see God in the midst of pain or to be encouraged by the deep truth that love does eventually conquer all. Sermons aren’t meant to make us feel good about ourselves. They are supposed to fuel us up and fire us up and send us out into the world, ready to do the hard and painful work of kingdom building as children of God and followers of Christ. To read/download this sermon, click on 20170819 Racism is a GIant