Most weeks, our worship leader offers a 15–20 minute sermon based on the Scripture texts for the day.
Our regular preacher is pretty versatile. She’ll tell stories, pull together different ideas, lead a meditation, give the congregation an “assignment” to talk about in twos or threes, show a slide show or video, or sometimes even sing to the congregation. The sermon functions to deepen our reflection on the Scripture themes of the day, and often leaves us with a challenge or a question.
Scripture texts are outlined in the Revised Common Lectionary.
What I Mean When I Say…
Easter morning’s sermon wasn’t just any old sermon… it was a full-fledged dialogue between the preacher and the Crossroads massed choirs! The Children’s, Youth, and Adult Choirs all shared in the preaching task with Rev. Cari, punctuating the spoken word with choral responses. Our recording capacity, unfortunately, is lacking these musical offerings, so we’ll display…
What Do You Think About Jesus?
Palm Sunday was Children’s Sabbath at Crossroads this year, which meant that not only did the children lead the congregation in our annual palm parade, but they also led the entire worship service. Listen as Paige shares the reflections of the group of children who participated in preparing for the service, on the entry…
Amazing Grace
“Myth-Buster” preacher Craig Perry tells Crossroads members the true story of Amazing Grace hymn-writer John Newton in this sermon on Psalm 130, a psalm of ascent. In his sermon, Craig identifies the complexity of human life and invites us to imagine looking back on our own time from a future date. Getting that distance may…
Conversations as Distraction from Healing
Continuing the theme of the last few sermons, during Lent, Rev. Cari offered this sermon on John 9 (the story of the healing of a person blind from birth). She compared the experience of this one (in the story) to that of Megan Phelps-Roper’s in her TED talk: I grew up in the Westboro…
Conversations at the Margins
Following where Rev. Edith began last week, Rev. Cari continues with the theme of conversations ~ this week between Jesus and a Samaritan woman by the well of Jacob. How do we have conversations among people of different traditions, and differing world-views? In this sermon Rev. Cari shares how Jesus begins “from below”…
Conversations in the Night
The Rev. Edith Baird shared a sermon today based on the texts John 3:1-17, Genesis 12:1-4a and her favourite Psalm, the 121st. Our beloved retired minister introducing the Hebrew Scripture as featuring “old people” got a good laugh out of the congregation…but we were rapt with attention as Edith went on to describe the…
Work Avoidance
Yet another snowy Sunday at Crossroads, and Rev. Cari preached on Matthew 4:1-11, the story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. This sermon on work avoidance draws the distinction between those adaptive challenges which require our full attention and engagement, and the technical problems which are usually more attractive to us, since we actually…
Looking For Jesus
On this seventh Sunday after Epiphany, Rev. Cari pulled an “old” sermon out of her back pocket, and re-preached it. It’s about those familiar words regarding “turning the other cheek and going the extra mile” from Jesus in Matthew 5:38-48. She got Brenda up as an assistant when it came time to act…
“Scripturing” & “Traditioning”
Two “made-up” words to share the process Jesus engages in for today’s text, Matthew 5:21-37, and the process the church is invited into by that text. Rev. Cari shares that she “chickened out” of preaching on this text, when it has come up in the lectionary in years past, but this was the year!…
The “E” Word
Preaching as part of the Vancouver School of Theology’s “Theology Sunday,” Craig Perry opened up a new approach to evangelism in his sermon on I Corinthians 2:1-13. What if we approached evangelism not so much as an exercise in Christian Apologetics (having a tight argument for why Christ is the answer) but as an…