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The Immediate Word

TIW Contributors

George Reed
Mary Austin
Dean Feldmeyer
Chris Keating
Tom Willadsen
Katy Stenta
Quantisha Mason-Doll
Proper 23 | Ordinary Time 28 - C
Thomas Willadsen
Dean Feldmeyer
Mary Austin
Christopher Keating
George Reed
Katy Stenta

For October 9, 2022:



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 23 | Ordinary Time 28 - C
Water is Life
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Mustard Seeds and Mulberry Trees
Proper 21 | Ordinary Time 26 - C
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Somehow It All Works Out
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You Say There Is No God, But Are You Listening?

New & Featured This Week

The Immediate Word

Thomas Willadsen
Dean Feldmeyer
Mary Austin
Christopher Keating
George Reed
Katy Stenta
For October 9, 2022:
  • Water is Life by Tom Willadsen. Water can destroy. Without water humanity is destroyed.
  • Second Thoughts: Shawshank Babylon by Dean Feldmeyer. “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” Andy Dufresne in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King.

Emphasis Preaching Journal

Wayne Brouwer
In 1637, Eilenburg, Saxony, was surrounded by the dark night of the soul. Europe was at war. Eilenburg was tossed back and forth by the armies. Three times during that year it was attacked and severely damaged. When the armies left, refugees poured in by the thousands. Diseases ran rampant. Food was scarce.

There was only one pastor in the city, a fellow named Martin Rinkart. His journal for 1637 indicates that he conducted over 4,500 funerals that year, sometimes as many as forty or fifty a day. Life was a constant death, and each morning stank of disaster.
Mark Ellingsen
Bill Thomas
Frank Ramirez
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-12

StoryShare

Frank Ramirez
John E. Sumwalt
Contents
“Band of Brothers” by Frank Ramirez
“Yet, Some Are Healed” by John Sumwalt


Band of Brothers
by Frank Ramirez
Luke 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. (v. 11)

CSSPlus

John Jamison
Hello, everyone! (Let them respond.) I have another story for you today. Are you ready? (Let them respond.) Great!

The Village Shepherd

Janice B. Scott
Praxis the pixie was in trouble again. In fact, Praxis was rarely out of trouble. It had all started when he'd begun to be himself. You see, Praxis changed colour when he felt strongly about anything, and so for quite a while he'd tried very hard to be good. But it hadn't worked, for instead of being just one colour, blue or yellow or green or pink or purple or red, he'd become a rainbow of blotches and spots, stripes and circles, all different colours. It had been very embarrassing. So now Praxis was just himself, and that meant he wasn't always good.

SermonStudio

Stephen P. McCutchan
Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals.
-- Psalm 66:5

Schuyler Rhodes
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (v. 10). "Perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). These two powerful statements reveal for us the inadequacies of the translation process of the English language. These two juxtaposing passages reveal only a tiny fraction of the contradictions and conflicts found within our holy Word. No wonder people have trouble reading and understanding.
Dallas A. Brauninger
1. Text
Donna E. Schaper
I went to the store to buy a new pair of blue jeans. The clerk asked if I wanted slim fit, easy fit, or relaxed fit, regular or faded, stone washed or acid washed, button fly or regular fly ... and that's when I started to sputter. Can't I just have a pair of blue jeans, size fourteen? Then I went to the grocery store and found 85 varieties of crackers, 285 kinds of cookies, and thirteen different kinds of raspberry jelly. Can't I just get a cookie and a cracker and a bottle of jelly any more?

R. Kevin Mohr
In a scene from the romantic comedy, While You Were Sleeping, "Ox" Callaghan is waxing eloquent at the breakfast table one morning about those rare moments in life when everything seems to be going just right and falling into place. "In that one minute," he says, "you have peace." But his son, Jack, who is Ox's partner in the family business, has finally decided it is time to break the news to his dad that he wants out to start his own business, and so he bursts his father's bubble, saying, "Pop, this isn't that minute."1

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