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The Immediate Word

TIW Contributors

George Reed
Mary Austin
Dean Feldmeyer
Chris Keating
Tom Willadsen
Bethany Peerbolte
Katy Stenta
Proper 6 | Ordinary Time 11 - B
Bethany Peerbolte
Thomas Willadsen
Mary Austin
Dean Feldmeyer
Chris Keating
George Reed

For June 13, 2021:




What is The Immediate Word?

The Immediate Word gives a theological perspective on today's headlines and popular culture for your sermon, children’s sermon, and worship service. The Immediate Word gives a theological perspective on today's headlines and popular culture.

Cutting Edge: THE IMMEDIATE WORD gives you the tools to be cutting edge ... to put you in touch with today's most critical issues and to aid you in crafting messages and presentations that will truly help your congregants understand the Gospel in the context of what is current and most important to them.

Collaborative: THE IMMEDIATE WORD is a unique collaboration of some of the sharpest, most contemporary clergy of our day in an Internet-based service that gives you weekly information, inspiration, and presentation materials for your sermon, children’s sermon, and worship service.

Enabling: THE IMMEDIATE WORD will enable you to create high-impact sermons, children’s sermons, sermon outlines, worship services and compose pastoral prayers that help people pray with you, write compelling pastoral columns for your newsletter, arm your Sunday school teachers with meaningful, up-to-the-minute discussion sermon material, speak more constructively during the "Concerns of the Church" portion of your sermon, children's sermon and worship service about matters that worry your parishioners, advertise timely discussion topics to draw people into your church, and more.

Interactive: THE IMMEDIATE WORD is a dynamic, interactive process. First, among the team of clergy that creates it every week. Secondly, with you: you can personally participate in the creation process by providing your input and reactions to the input of others on new sermons, children’s sermons, sermon outlines and worship resources.

Timely: THE IMMEDIATE WORD sends participants the topic of the week on Friday and the final product on Tuesday afternoon, giving you time to digest the sermon and worship service materials and then incorporate them into your preparations for the coming Sunday service to deliver high-impact sermons and worship services.

Satisfaction Guaranteed: THE IMMEDIATE WORD is not only guaranteed to satisfy you, we believe it will actually energize your ministry. We are so confident that you will find THE IMMEDIATE WORD to be such a great value that if you are not completely satisfied with the service we will refund the balance of your subscription payment, no questions asked.
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Recent TIW Installments

Proper 6 | Ordinary Time 11 - B
The Image of God
Proper 5 | Ordinary Time 10 - B
Walking the Line
Trinity Sunday | 1st Sunday after Pentecost - B
Negotiating the Power of Life
Day of Pentecost - B
Are We There Yet?
Seventh Sunday of Easter - B
Whatever Happened to Justus?

New & Featured This Week

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John Jamison
Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.” (vv. 30-32)

The Immediate Word

Bethany Peerbolte
Thomas Willadsen
Mary Austin
Dean Feldmeyer
Chris Keating
George Reed
For June 13, 2021:
  • The Image of God by Bethany Peerbolte — Pride at its core is a time for people to cry out to God about the oppression and pain they have suffered. They have the right to hear God respond with powerful rescue.
  • Second Thoughts: Uprooting Evil by Tom Willadsen — Our culture continues to reap a harvest of racism. How can we uproot it? What can we transplant in its place?

Emphasis Preaching Journal

David Kalas
The old aphorism claims that “seeing is believing.”  Doubting Thomas might agree. And so, too, would the present culture, which seems increasingly to prefer the physical over the metaphysical. We believe what we can see, but we are skeptical of what we cannot. 
Mark Ellingsen
Frank Ramirez
Bill Thomas
Bonnie Bates
1 Samuel 15:3--16:13

StoryShare

Frank Ramirez
John E. Sumwalt
Contents
“A Person’s A Person” by Frank Ramirez
“Aaron Was A Great Baseball Player Too” by John Sumwalt


A Person’s A Person
by Frank Ramirez
Mark 4:26-34

He did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. (Mark 4:34)

SermonStudio

Stephen P. McCutchan
1 Samuel 15:34--16:13
Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.
-- 1 Samuel 16:7

Gregory L. Tolle
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy. (vv. 1-4)

Nibs Stroupe
I've got a home in that kingdom -- ain't that good news.
I've got a home in that kingdom -- ain't that good news.
I'm gonna lay down this world, I'm gonna shoulder up my cross,
I'm gonna take it home to my Jesus, ain't that good news.1

Richard E. Zajac
"... It is like mustard seed ... the smallest of all the earth's seeds ... yet ... springs up to become the largest of shrubs ..."

A mustard seed yields power in different ways.

We are all, I believe, familiar with the story of the Titanic. An unsinkable ship on its maiden voyage strikes an iceberg. The ship goes down, over a thousand people die. It's an amazing story, which is why it's been told not only on the silver screen and on Broadway, but in countless books as well.

Stan Purdum
It seems to me that the so-called "reality" television shows that have proliferated on the airwaves recently have introduced some new lows in the quality of broadcasting, and one of the more unwholesome -- and dare I say even ungodly -- notions they have reinforced is that what you look like is a measure of your value as a person.

Two shows in particular promote this view: Extreme Makeover and Average Joe.

Special Occasion