When asked about how I choose the passages that I preach on, I often say that I gave up on the Lectionary years ago.

The lectionary is a three year cycle of Bible passages for reading during Sunday worship. Preachers who use the lectionary generally confine their preaching to one or more of the passages listed for the day.

There are a number of reasons why I gave up. I grew tired of the it. After the first couple of times through the cycle, I certainly found it repetitive. I also have a rather perverse liking for Bible passages that are obscure and often forgotten and would not want to be denied the opportunity to preach on them just because they weren't in the lectionary.

But, in many ways, my biggest beef was Advent. The season of Advent is the season immediately before Christmas – starting 4 Sundays before the big day.  My problem with Advent is that the themes of the season in Christian tradition and in the lectionary are all about the end of the world. All of the readings have to do with the second coming of Christ and apocalyptic visions of the end times.

Now, I don’t have any problems with preaching about such things. They are very important Christian themes and I believe that they still have much to teach us in these modern and often troubling times.  I am just not sure that the month of December is the best time to talk about these things.  During that season, our society is often in an orgy of overconsumption and spending and cultural clashes often come to the fore. I believe that these issues need to be addressed in the church. I don’t want to miss them because I’m busy talking about the end of the world. So, for several years now, I have not really preached advent and have used the time of the year to talk about other pressing issues.

But I’m wondering if this is the year to finally preach advent during advent. Why? Well because this year the end of the world might just be on everyone’s mind because it has apparently been scheduled yet again. As you’ve probably heard, the Mayan Calendar runs out this year on the winter solstice – December 21. Some have interpreted this to mean that the Mayans predicted the end of the world at that time and have gone on to make connections to other “signs of the times.”

Surely this will be all over the media and thus on everyone’s minds this December. Well Christians can talk about the end of the world as well as any Mayans so surely this is as good a time as any to present our perspective. So, yes, I am tempted to actually preach Advent this year. Whether I use the lectionary passages to do so, I have not decided, but it is definitely time to dust of these important themes in our tradition.

Introducing a new group in our congregation: the Inbetweeners, a place where people of “in-between” age can find opportunities to belong and believe through fellowship and friendship, sharing and support. We will get together for some adult nights out during the year. Leave your children at home; come out and have some fun, meet your friends, make some new friends.

Our first official meeting will be on Saturday, October 13 at 7 pm until about nine. It will be a games night at the church. Bring your favourite card or board game and your favourite snack to share     (no nuts please).

Yesterday I was filling out an application for the Pastors of Excellence program (I’ll no doubt write more about that program in the future if I am accepted). The application was surprisingly probing.

One of the questions gave me some pause. It asked, “What is your greatest frustration in ministry?”

My immediate response was to say that nothing frustrated me more than when people get upset at something that has gone wrong or that hasn’t gone their way in the life of the church and, in response, they withhold something – perhaps their money or their time and talent or, in the worst cases, their entire presence.

I do hate that and find it very frustrating. And even if the thing that they are reacting to has nothing to do with me and is nothing that I could have (or should have) made to go differently, I always feel as if it is my fault. I feel personally attacked.

So that is the response that I wrote down. But when I went back and looked at it, I knew that I hadn’t really told the whole story. Though I hate that kind of circumstance, I realized what really frustrated me wasn’t quite that.

You see, I find that I may hate the circumstance but I do not hate the people who react that way. The real frustration is that I can sympathize with them, even while I do not approve of the ways that they respond. The reality is that things do go wrong in the church – sometimes very seriously wrong. People are unkind or unfeeling towards others. Disagreements are not dealt with constructively. Often (not always, of course) when people are upset they have good reason to be. I don’t like the way that they react but I am frustrated to find that I can sympathize with them. Perhaps it would be so much easier if I could just hate them, but I find that I can’t.

I have decided to preach a sermon (in a couple of months) on the issue of when people withdraw from their support of the church because they have been aggrieved. I don’t know what to say about it yet, but I am seeking some Biblical inspiration. The best story I can come up with so far is Jesus’ parable of the tenants who refused pay their rent, but that one hardly ends well – with everyone dead. (Though, I guess, that is where the church might end up if we don’t tackle this problem.)

Where else might I look?