Stories to Live by

In offering these sermons to a wider readership, I am seeking to repay a debt. It is a large debt, because in many ways my Christian life has been shaped and enriched by sermons, beginning with the sermons I heard in the church in Glasgow where I grew up and where Dr Harry Thompson made scripture vividly alive., My indebtedness continues through the numerous occasions when I have been ministered to by the sermons of others, including published sermons-as many of my footnotes will demonstrate.
It was in that church in Glasgow that I heard God's call to ministry. Our pastor gave the youth group amazing freedom in all our program activities-there was, of course, no youth pastor to shepherd us. One aspect of that freedom was that each year we were invited to conduct an evening service, sermon included, and the pastor left us entirely to do it ourselves. One year, it fell to me to deliver the message. As it happened, I was in the middle of a crossroads: my plans for my future career were in doubt and ministry had unexpectedly suggested itself to me. I was resisting, feeling properly inadequate and unworthy-until that evening service. Not that my inadequacy or unworthiness had been removed, but my hesitation about pursuing this sense of call was removed and I glimpsed something of the privilege and joy that preaching offered.