From Words of Woe to Unbelievable News: Alternative Voices for the Lenten Journey

by Robert D. Cornwall, David Ackerman (Contributor)

You've been a lectionary preacher throughout your ministry. You like the discipline of dealing with the scripture of the week rather than just grabbing something that is easy for you to handle. You're willing to preach on the hard stuff.

But what about the rest of scripture, those passages that never appear in the weekly readings from the Revised Common Lectionary? Are you and your congregation missing something that could be of great benefit?

Dr. David Ackerman, who writes the introduction to From Words of Woe to Unbelievable News, felt the need to cover more of scripture and proposed a fourth year lectionary that covered passages that are not included in the Revised Common Lectionary. In turn, Dr. Bob Cornwall, a pastor highly qualified for the task, chose to use these texts in a series of sermons for Lent and Holy Week. He preached those sermons in 2014.

We now offer these sermons in this Topical Line Drives volume. One of the stumbling blocks with new ideas is the question of how one gets started. It's sometimes hard to find just the approach to take to a new set of texts and a new set of ideas. Bob Cornwall leads the way, finding timely and powerful applications of these difficult texts.

36 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2015

About the author

Robert D. Cornwall is minister-at-large after his retirement as pastor of Central Woodward Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Troy, Michigan. . He holds a M.Div. and a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and is a graduate of Northwest Christian University in Eugene, OR. He is the author/editor of several books including "Second Thoughts About the Second Coming: Understanding the End Times, Our Future, and Christian Hope" (Westminster John Knox Press) coauthored with Ronald J. Allen. Other books include the second edition of "Unfettered Spirit: Spiritual Gifts for the New Great Awakening" and "The Letters of John: A Participatory Study Guide" (Energion Publications), along with a wide variety of other books (see the author listing), including Visible and Apostolic: The Constitution of the Church in High Church and Nonjuror Thought (University of Delaware Press, 1993); Gilbert Burnet's Discourse on the Pastoral Care, (Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), A Cry from the Cross: Sermons on the Seven Last Words of Christ (CSSPublishing, 2008), Religion, Politics and Dissent, 1660-1832: Essays in Honour of James E Bradley, edited with William Gibson (Ashgate, 2010); Ultimate Allegiance: The Subversive Nature of the Lord's Prayer, (Energion Publications, 2010); and Ephesians: A Participatory Study Guide, (Energion Publications, 2010). He has contributed articles to a number of books, encyclopedias, and journals, including Religious Identities in Britain, 1660-1832, Events that Changed the Word in the Eighteenth Century, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, The Encyclopedia of the Stone Campbell Movement, Encyclopedia of Protestantism, Church History, Anglican Theological Review, Christian Century Congregations, the Progressive Christian, and Anglican and Episcopal History. He served for many years as the editor of Sharing the Practice, the journal of the Academy of Parish Clergy.

Reviews

[Robert D. Cornwall]

In this book I have collected sermons preached during the season of Lent using the alternative lectionary developed by David Ackerman. These texts take us places we often don't go, especially as preachers. This includes the longer ending of Mark, where the news seems unbelievable -- and yet perhaps that's the point.

This can serve as a nice weekly study for a small group.