Dwight A. Moody

National Geographic cable channel recently aired a program entitled “Pint Size Preachers.” Here is the link. It is both spell-binding and disturbing.

Perhaps that 50-minute video inspired the studio in Hollywood who contacted us last week seeking names and addresses of other pint size preachers.  I did not respond.

Eighteen months ago we were approached by another production company wanting to do a reality show with high school preachers. I engaged in a month-long email dialogue, during which I fielded warnings from key colleagues and watched last year’s reality show about Amish: Breaking Amish. Frankly, I thought that show did a good job of reflecting reality and making it interesting.

But pint size preachers?  One colleague wrote: “Not the pond we want to swim in.” I agree; but at the same time, I am fascinated by child prodigies, especially in the arts. Jesus, I am convinced, was a child prodigy as have been many of the famous pianists and composers. Some mimicked their musically talented parents and started playing musical instruments at a very early age. Van Cliburn testifies that his call to be a classical pianist happened at age five!

There is much evidence that many young people think seriously about their life work beginning at adolescence, about age 12. Their dreams at that age of making movies, fighting fires, teaching children, discovering cures, playing ball, planting corn, programming computers, singing songs, and yes, preaching gospel are very real and powerful.

Not all vocation visions last through college into the job search; but many do. Such dreams at this age cease being primarily about parental influence and begin to flow directly from the soul and imagination of the young person.

Which is why we seek to identify young people as early as 14 think of preaching the gospel as a vocation. I was 15 when the idea stirred my imagination. I am suspicious of three-year-old preachers; but when a 16-something kid signs up to preach at a regional or national festival I take it very seriously. It is part of our mission to “identify, network, support, and inspire young people in their call to gospel preaching.”

I am reproducing here an article distributed by the Alban Institute. The text is taken from a new book the Alban Institute has just published entitled Preaching That Matters: Reflective Practices for Transforming Sermons. The book is written by Dr. Lori J. Carrell, who is Distinguished Professor Communication at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. Dr. Carrell is also a friend of mine and a member of the core leadership team at the Academy of Preachers. She attends our National Festival of Young Preachers where she has been both a featured speaker and a workshop leader; she designs and administers the tools we use to assess our festivals and their impact on the Young Preachers. Dr. Carrell is committed to the mission and programs of the Academy of Preachers and sees them as a powerful antidote to the growing indifference to preaching in the church and among ministers.

Now these words from Dr. Carrell:

“Thousands of listeners from across the United States can contribute to your thinking about the potential value of preaching. These adult listeners attend all kinds of churches—tiny and mega, but mostly medium; healthy and troubled; mainline, evangelical, Catholic, and community. Their responses have been gathered through multiple studies.

“Fifty-four pastors will arrive at the Center for Excellence in Ministry in a few months, ready to hear feedback from their listeners. Their parishioners have recorded responses to recent sermons through ten-question surveys. If these new listener-respondents are like the thousands surveyed previously, they do not usually provide their preachers with feedback.

“More than 78 percent of listeners say that they have “never” discussed a sermon with their preachers, so how could you possibly know what your listeners are thinking?I am writing to share compiled results of listeners’ responses about the value of your preaching, to apologize for our previous silence, and to set the record straight. Pastor, here’s why we listen and why your preaching matters to us.

We Listen to Your Preaching Expecting Inspiration

“When asked to list the elements of the church service “most likely to have an impact on my spiritual journey,” the number one answer from listeners was “the sermon.” Preachers did not predict their listeners would answer that way! Said a listener from a coastal state, “I like good music and my church friends, but I come on Sunday hoping for inspiration from the sermon, inspiration to encourage my spiritual growth.”

“When asked to give advice to pastors, another wrote, “Recognize the power of your words.” The role of inspiration in preaching is often overlooked by pastors who may be focusing on explanation and exposition. Please hear the affirmation of your role as a leader of a community of Christ-followers who are seeking spiritual growth through the inspiration present in your preaching. Perhaps you thought their silence suggested they were not responding. Think again.

We Look to Your Preaching for Spiritual Leadership

“We can download daily devotionals and upload viral videos, but where do we gather to hear a community leader speak with us about important issues? In the United States, in 2013, that place is still the church. One listener admits, “I can get better presentation from television preaching, but I want to hear this person I know, this person who knows me, this leader in our community of believers. . . . I really believe God speaks through the pastor to us.”

“Though some analysts predict that a few podcasting superpreachers will soon proclaim to a great global pew, right now most Christ-followers are seeking spiritual direction from the public spoken words of their pastors. Your physical presence in the congregation creates the opportunity for relationship with the listening community. The credibility emerging from that relational connection is a critical contributor to the potential power of your preaching. Listeners expect spiritual direction from your preaching.

We Rely on Your Preaching for Spiritual Content

“Preaching is unique among sources of advice. Listeners are clear that they want biblically based content in sermons. One dissatisfied listener complained, “At our church, we’re encouraged to be nice, be kind, have a positive attitude. How is that different from everybody else? What does it have to do with the Bible or God?”

“In less than the split second it took to push the Enter key just now, a Web search for spiritual growth help provided 52,800,000 links for me to browse. And yet, listeners find unique value in sermon content. They keep coming back to church. Why? They are seeking spiritual content from your preaching; quite specifically, they want to hear from God.

“If you are a preacher who sometimes wonders what parishioners are expecting, please hear this crucial response from your previously silent listeners: We are listening to you for spiritual content, which we have determined is a priority for us, listening to hear God’s voice through you, listening for something we don’t hear or view or download anywhere else.

We Listen to Your Preaching Expecting Long-Lasting Impact

“Even listeners who say a particular sermon merely reminded them of something they already knew resolve to “think about” the content during the week. Now that’s determination! Listener optimism about the value of preaching is reflected in another significant response: a vast majority of the thirty thousand plus listeners participating in this research thus far anticipate that sermons—regardless of topic or preacher—are likely to affect their spiritual journeys “in lasting ways.”

“Even when the pastor hasn’t used inspirational language, hasn’t included ideas for implementation, or hasn’t even asked for change, listeners are still committed to contemplating the content, because they perceive there is potential for spiritual growth to occur. And many who didn’t find content that might lead to spiritual life-change this week still say, “I am motivated to come back to hear more sermons.”

“We listeners crave your spiritual leadership. Overwhelmed? Doubting your impact? God has a well-established pattern of calling inadequate people to monumental tasks, speaking through them in spite of their deficiencies or failures. I heard one of you preach about that just last Sunday.

“Believing in the potential power of your preaching can begin a radical transformation process. Yes, attention spans are short. Yes, biblical literacy is lower than it used to be.Yes, solidified deposits of individualism and materialism may be barriers to your preaching about New Testament Christ-following communities. But preaching can make a difference. A significant difference. And it’s not just your listeners who have such grand expectations for the impact of preaching. The Message paraphrase of 1 Corinthians1:21 puts it like this:

“Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

Preaching Matters

“Affirming that preaching matters is itself transformational. If you actually believe that those minutes you will spend communicating with your congregation next Sunday have the potential to change lives, you may approach the pulpit and your prayer life and your sermon preparation a little differently from the way you did last week, when you wondered if those spoken words of yours were evaporating. Preaching, and all related tasks, may move up on your priority list.

“The spoken act of preaching remains the predominant mode of communicating God’s Word to God’s people. Next weekend, next month, and probably next year, you will continue to speak face to face with believers who want to grow spiritually. As a person called to a spiritual leadership role, your commitments to studying Scripture and deepening your faith are both critical to pending transformation in your congregations and communities. What else is needed?

“In a recent address to academics who study learning, Georgetown University’s Associate Provost for Institutional Renewal Randy Bass provided a challenge appropriate for both scholars and preachers. He described a visit to the Cape Cod ceramics studio of acclaimed potter Joan Lederman. Joan began decades ago to work with mud discarded from an oceanography institute in her Woods Hole, Massachusetts, community. As Randy (carefully!) examined a piece of her pottery created with sediment from the floors of all seven oceans, he asked her to describe how she deepens her learning, continuing to grow as an artist. Working at her wheel, Joan described a moment-by-moment, heightened awareness of how the mud responds to her touch. That encounter inspired Bass to embrace a similar scrutiny for his work, and to declare that intense inspection of what we do as we do it is necessary for deep learning.

“For as long as you continue to speak for God publicly—to preach or teach or proclaim—a close, authentic examination of your sermon communication through reflective practice is needed. Challenge yourself, prayerfully—for your calling to preach is high and holy.”
______________________________________

This article is excerpted and adapted from Preaching that Matters: Reflective Practices for Transforming Sermons by Lori J. Carrell. Copyright ©2013 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. This book will be for sale at all preaching events sponsored and managed by the Academy of Preachers.

By the time the festival rolls around (January 2-5, 2014) more than 40 other businesses, congregations, denominations, institutions and organizations will join this effort to sponsor one of the most amazing events in American Christianity.

Some will advertise/exhibit/sponsor in order to recruit students; others to sell products and services; some to showcase and support their own young preachers; and a few simply to endorse the work of the Academy of Preachers.

Forty of these advertisers will set up exhibits and actually talk with these Young Preachers (and their mentors, teachers, parents, and friends—attendance is expected to top 600 this year, not counting PREACHAPALOOZA).

Want to be a part of the fifth National Festival of Young Preachers?

You can register to attend, of course; and all aspects of the festival are free and open to the public. We do charge for food, of course; and we sell a room package of three nights and 4 meals for about $350: not bad for a first class hotel at the center of a city.

Here is the link to the National Festival registration.

You can sign on to advertise and/or exhibit at the National Festival; or you can agree to host or sponsor part of the Festival: a workshop, a dinner, a break, a reception, the Gospel Slam or even PREACHAPALOOZA, even a worship service. We are looking for sponsors that will help us plan, staff, and lead these plenary events at the 2014 National Festival of Young Preachers.

Here is the link to the National Festival advertising and sponsorship information.

Our gathering in Indianapolis promises to be an inspirational and transformational event. Plan to be there, to promote your own institution or products, to play a prominent and public role in making it happen, and to help us “identify, network, support, and inspire young people in their call to gospel preaching.”

Pentecostal Preaching. It began as a movement in the Azusa Street Revival in California in 1906 but spread out in all directions to become the most potent surge of Christianity since the Reformation. As many as half of the Christ Followers around the world are now identified with this tradition. Their preaching is textual in theme, animated in style, populist in appeal, and persuasive in nature. It has sustained a clarion call for conversion, for spirituality, for an embrace of the supernatural, and for rejecting the ways of the world. Pentecostal preaching and music have had an enormous impact on the way faith in Jesus Christ is articulated and practiced around the world.

Catholic Preaching: When the last century opened the guidelines for worship in the Roman Catholic Church stated: “The liturgy may be interrupted by a homily.” But the Second Vatican Council changed all that. A Sunday homily became a necessity and, along with the adoption of the vernacular language and the reorientation of the priest to face the congregation, transformed the worship experience of the millions of Christians around the world that gather in Roman Catholic churches. In 1982 the US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued their famous missive about preaching, entitled “Fulfilled in your Hearing.” It offered both a rationale for preaching and practical steps toward more effective preaching. Just months ago they updated this emphasis on preaching with a new document, entitled “Preaching the Mystery of Faith.” Nothing revolutionary: just more attention to the importance of preaching.

Social Justice Preaching: This is the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, who died 45 years ago today (April 4, 1968). King blended the evangelical passion of historically black preaching with new-found energy to address long-ignored social conditions to create a fresh emphasis in preaching, especially among Protestants. We hear it loud and clear in our Festivals of Young Preachers, and not just from preachers of color. Much of the enthusiasm that formerly was channeled into saving the lost and evangelizing the world now flows into this call for justice for “the least, the last, the lost and the left out” (to invoke a sermon title of Wesley Thompson AoP ’13). The words of Hebrew prophets mix with the teaching of Jesus to give powerful biblical grounding to this stream of preaching.

Story Telling: It didn’t begin with Fred Craddock, but his book “As One without Authority” helped to shift the design of sermons from declaratory and deductive to exploratory and inductive. Slowly, thousands of preachers stood to entice hearers to consider both the wisdom of God and also the way of Jesus rather than insist authoritatively that listeners hear and heed the word of God. The change was more than subtle, responding as it did to the eroding position of preachers and their message in a culture increasingly pluralistic and secular. Through it all, drama, imagination, and story-telling reclaimed the same central role in the proclamation of the Word as it has always had in the biblical narrative itself (and, even more importantly, in the meta-narrative of the Christian world view).

All four of these trends, carried along increasingly by female voices, continue to dominate the homiletic landscape. While the new century (and new millennium!) will certainly bring its own fresh currents of public speech and proclamation (such as visual effects), it will take some mighty tides of fresh homiletic influence to re-direct these powerful waves of gospel preaching.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dwightamoody

Pittsburgh

Louisville, Nashville, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Dallas, New York, and Boston: these are a few of the places we have been to introduce the Academy of Preachers. But not Pittsburgh: and that is why I leave today of a four day road trip to the place we lived for nine wonderful years.

Allan is driving and I am riding, and reading, talking on the phone, and editing sermons from the 2013 National Festival of Young Preachers; and together we are taking our mission of “identifying, networking, supporting, and inspiring young people in their call to gospel preaching” to that wonderful community at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers.

We have appointments with key leaders at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Trinity School of Ministry, and Franciscan University in Steubenville (Ohio). We will meet students at all three schools (and perhaps a few more places along the way). We have breakfast plans with a young Roman Catholic youth minister and dinner plans with two couples, long time friends from our ministry days in the Steel City.

Our hope, of course, is to cultivate donors, partners, and young preachers, to entice some of all three to participate in our 2014 National Festival of Young Preachers, to assist at least one institution to host a campus festival or a gospel slam. Then after that, perhaps the Pittsburgh Regional Festival of Young Preachers!

New York and Texas are the sites of our regional festivals for 2013, and Boston and Nashville for 2014; and we are already thinking about Washington DC and Kansas City as sites for regional festivals in 2015. I hope to visit Kansas City again this fall.

In order to host a regional festival in a given city we need 5-10 Partners in the region. Partners are businesses, congregations, denominations, institutions or organizations that will write to us a letter of endorsement and agree to collaborate in some way to fulfill our mission as an organization. As of today, we have 111 Founding and National Partners…and not a one in Western Pennsylvania. I hope to change that this week!

Pray for us as we head into stormy winter weather, that it will be a pleasant and profitable trip.

The 2014 National Festival promises to be the best yet.  It will be our fifth National Festival and there will be some recognition of this milestone at the Festival. It will also feature:

• an expanded Gospel Slam which will showcase the best performers of our National Gospel Slam Challenge;
• a choral music conclave under the direction of Dr. Everett McCorvey and the American Spiritual Ensemble;
• a redesigned PREACHAPALOOZA in the Hilbert Circle Theater that will attract a capacity crowd of 1,500;
• a Festival Covenant Church strategy that will shower the Festival with prayer and place numerous Young Preachers in area pulpits on Sunday morning January 5.

But as always, the prime time and space will be given to the 116 young preachers who come from every corner of the country and from every stream of tradition in the wide river we call the Christian community.

The registration process requires that you pay a $75 deposit in order to reserve your preaching spot. Institutions and organizations may still reserve a block of preaching slots by paying this registration fee for as many preaching slots as needed.

Of course, the on-line registration includes the two Regional Festivals: the New York Regional Festival, September 27-28, in New York City (Union Seminary) and the Texas Regional Festival, October 4-5, in Waco, Texas (Truett Seminary). Each of these can accommodate up to 36 young preachers.

Our preaching theme for all three of these events (and for all of the campus and denominational festivals this year) is QUESTIONS OF THE SOUL. There is a page on this site that lists all the 52 biblical questions that offer outstanding texts for preaching.

It is going to be a good year for the Academy of Preachers!

But these things, like so much else happening in the world this week, are overshadowed by the appointment of the world’s most influential preacher.

His name is Francis: his new name, that is.  He has an old name, that people in Argentina knew, that people in the Vatican knew; but many will only know him by this new-yet-old name: Francis.  Pope Francis.

I applaud his selection. He is non-European. He is a simple man. He cares about ordinary people in the far-away corners of the world, especially the poor and the marginalized.

Yes, I would prefer a Pope more progressive on some issues; and I suspect that many decision-makers in the Roman Catholic Church have as their primary concern the administrative and operational mess at the Vatican. I understand that.

But regardless of his particular mix of attitudes and aptitudes, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Rome is the most prominent Christian in the world and the most important Christian preacher in the world. What he says matters; how he interprets Scripture matters; how he connects with people matters; how he envisions Christian living in the modern world matters. And for all these reasons, he matters, even to those of us not in the Roman Catholic Church, and even to those who target the Pope as the anti-Christ.

If his first address in the Sistine Chapel is any indication, the preaching of Francis will be simple, straightforward, strong, personable, spiritual, measured, and practical. I predict his preaching will be well-received. He is not a scholar like Benedict XVI; he is not a charismatic super-star like John Paul II.

See what you think of his first sermon:  http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/03/14/pope_francis:_1st_homily_%28full_text%29/en1-673526

We need good preachers in the world. Christians of all kinds are desperate for better preaching. The evangelization of our world with the good news of God’s reign depends, at least in part, upon the preaching of the word of God. Yes, there is a demand for grass-roots organization, for social ministry, for political vision, for intellectual vigor, for pastoral care, even for administrative skill; but above it all and around it all is the need for preaching, for the able and attractive spoken word presentation of the will and way of Jesus Christ.

Jesus, the gospels record, came preaching, and so should the Pope, and so should we. God bless all the gospel preachers around the world. It is not an easy task.

First, I stopped in to visit Brittany McLaney, AoP’11, (left) who is now assistant manager of the bookstore, chapel, and museum of Upper Room Ministries, a place I had never been. One of their world-renown publications, Weavings, is a Partner with the Academy of Preachers. While at The Upper Room I visited with Kentucky friend Johnny Sears, now Director of the Academy of Spiritual Formation, also a part of Upper Room Ministries. “I need to write you a letter of Partnership with the Academy of Preachers,” he said, and we talked about hosting a workshop at the National Festival on the spiritual formation of the preacher.

Second, I met with the public relations team at Vanderbilt Divinity School. The occasion was the presentation to VDS senior student Adam Graham AoP ’10 with a hardback copy of the new book of sermons Uncommon Sense: Jesus and the Renewal of the World (Chalice 2012). It is a collection of sermons from the 2012 National Festival of Young Preachers. Graham’s sermon title was chosen as the title of the book, and VDS is doing a story about this on their web site and in their newsletter (and to his hometown newspaper). The book is dedicated to VDS alum, David Emery, pastor of Middletown Christian Church.

Third, I attend the Trevecca Festival of Young Preachers at Trevecca Nazarene University. Trevecca, like Vanderbilt, is a Founding Partner with the Academy of Preachers. This was their third campus festival; I attended the one in 2011 and AoP Director of Programs Wyndee Holbrook attended the festival last year.  Professor Michael Jackson managed the event which featured 14 young preachers. “I am planning to bring at least four of these young preachers to the festival in Indianapolis,” he said to me after the event. Trevecca president Dan Boone was a featured preacher at the 2013 National Festival in Atlanta. Three other AoP Partners have hosted at least three campus festivals: University of Evansville, Morehouse College, and Truett Seminary.

Fourth, I had lunch with another Kentucky minister friend, Bret Robbe, now a senior manager with Lifeway, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. After catching up on personal and professional stuff over lunch, he introduced to me their new web-based teaching platform called the Ministry Grid. While designed for congregational use, I saw immediately its easy adaption to the needs of the Academy of Preachers, and he promised to explore how it might be marketed to a national organization like the Academy of Preachers.

Fifth, I talked with the vice president of academy affairs at American Baptist College in Nashville, Renita Weems (whom I had known through our mutual work in the programs of the Lilly Endowment). It was one of her young ministerial students T D Birdsong (who, I suspect, will become an AoP ’14 preacher!) who brought us together for this conversation; and before it was over Dr. Weems was saying things like, “I am very, very interested in us becoming a partner with you and more than that, I personally am interested in attending the festival.” I said Amen to that!

Sixth, I stopped on my way home in Springfield, Tennessee (where I had preached during an interim period at the First Baptist Church some years ago) to visit with AoP board member Julie Roe. We talked about her professional specialty and my great need: fund-raising. Per her suggestion, I have already re-written the text on our SUPPORT page on this web site; and together we planned a major donor feature for our 2014 National Festival of Young Preachers next January in Indianapolis. “We can raise $100,000,” she said,, “if we get the right people there.” Her confidence is born of her own experience at the 2013 National Festival in Atlanta.

It is hard to image a better return on investment (ROI, as it is known in the business world) for the $445 in expenses it cost me to drive those three hours to and from Nashville this week. It was wonderful in every way, and I plan to return soon: to help imagine and design the Nashville Regional Festival of Young Preachers (perhaps as early as 2014—if we can find a donor: see the SUPPORT page!)

Remembering D L Moody (1837-1899)

One hundred twenty five of the brightest young people in the country, all students at the highly-competitive Ivy League schools of the northeast, gathered to discuss their common projects: writing, editing, and publishing Christian scholarly journals for their respective student bodies.

Two speakers were on tap, and both were top notch: Dr. Michael Lindsay, world-class sociologist and president of near-by Gordon College; and Dr. John Lennox, world-class apologist and lecturer in Mathematics at Oxford University.

I was there because the organizers and the benefactors want to partner with the Academy of Preachers to host a Festival of Young Preachers in the region. I came away thinking: this is very do-able, in this very place!

The “place” was Park Street Church, a famous and influential congregation whose prime-time location is a block from the state capital and adjacent to Boston Common. Within easy walking blocks are the Old South Meetinghouse, the Old Statehouse, the famous Tremont Temple Baptist Church, the King’s Chapel, and the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.

Right in the middle of all of them is the site on Court Street with the historical plate marking the spot where the famous preacher Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899) was converted at the age of 18. I took a picture of it and posted it on Facebook.

I left Boston convinced it is the right place for the New England Festival of Young Preachers, and we will start planning for a 2014 date. Before I left, three young Harvard University undergraduates told me they would register for the New York Regional Festival scheduled for this September; and this morning an email brought the name and school of yet another one of these Ivy League students.
Add to these the steady stream of Harvard and Yale students who preach at our National Festival, and the healthy network of young New York preachers who do the same, and I suspect we will have one spectacular event this fall in New York and another one next year in Boston.

Boston: I’m ready to go to Boston again!

Fifteen hundred people from 30 countries gathered at the epicenter of the Reformed Church in America; and the first thing I observe is how different is this version of Calvinism than the version we have among Baptists in the South: warm, spiritual, hospitable, inclusive, open even to this progressive Baptist from the South. It has been an immersion and a transformation.

Second on my list are the plenary preachers: Luke Powery, dean of the chapel at Duke University; Carolyn Gordon, chair of the preaching department at Fuller Seminary; Marva Dawn, public intellectual at Regent College, Vancouver; and Greg Thompson, pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Charlottesville.

Four very different kinds of preachers, but the one spoken word I most remember is from Dr. Thompson: “Our congregations will never seek the flourishing of people that we teach them to hate.” And two hours after that sermon a long time ministerial friend on the phone with me described, first, his decades-long battle with his own homosexuality and, second, the vitriol and meanness that erupted among his own congregation when he finally came “out of the closet.”

Thursday I spent singing hymns (with 100 trained musicians!) from the new Christian Reform hymnal, “Lift Up Your Hearts: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs” (June, 2013 publication date). New arrangements of old favorites (“Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”–I’m surprised they even knew that one!) and fabulous new songs, some sung by a choir for the very first time: “Look and Learn” (1991), “God, Be in My Head” (1999), and “For the Healing of the Nations” (2012).

I can only describe my experience with the words that many of our young preachers use to describe their encounter with the Lord at our National Festivals of Young Preachers: powerful, inspirational, transformational…..yes, even awesome.

And I came away converted to a more intentional approach to worship at our National Festivals. I saw dramatic interpretations of scripture; I listened to organ and electric guitar playing together; I heard a ten-voice ensemble sing the Beatitudes in what must have been six-part harmony. I wished I could had attended this conference (built around the theme Sermon on the Mount) BEFORE we use that very text for our 2012 National Festival of Young Preachers.

This is but the “tip of the iceberg” more than one person said to me in reference to the new worship resources and practices that have emerged in the global church in recent years (since Vatican II, a Catholic told me); and after three days of wading on the edge of this vast ocean, I am determined to dive right in!! Somebody stand by to rescue me!!