{"id":1999,"date":"2012-01-06T01:02:44","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T09:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/?p=1999"},"modified":"2012-01-06T01:02:46","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T09:02:46","slug":"preaching-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2012\/01\/06\/preaching-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"preaching Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The holidays are now behind us. We had a seven part series this year, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/gbcvic.org\/our-sermons\/?preacher=0&amp;service=0&amp;book=&amp;series=3&amp;date=2011-11-19&amp;enddate=2012-01-02&amp;title=&amp;sortby=m.datetime&amp;dir=desc&amp;page=1\" target=\"_blank\">The Son of David<\/a>\u201d. I love to preach Christmas series. We have had a different series almost every year of my ministry.<\/p>\n<p>Other preachers have spoken to me of being challenged by preaching at seasons like Christmas. I suspect that perhaps the reason is a too narrow view of what is acceptable for a Christmas series. If we simply return to the Christmas passages in Matthew and Luke again and again, it can get difficult. One can only exegete so much out of these very familiar passages, especially when our people have heard it all before.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t wish to make a big point on this post, but simply to ask a few questions of any preachers who read it. First, do you find Christmas to be a \u201chomiletical challenge\u201d? Do you dread Christmas for that reason? If not, why not? And what do you do to preach Christmas? What are your goals in preaching for the Christmas season?<\/p>\n<p>I am thinking of writing up some of my approach, but I\u2019d like to hear from others first. Is it a topic of interest?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"don_sig2\" alt=\"don_sig2\" src=\"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/don_sig2.png\" width=\"150\" height=\"50\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The holidays are now behind us. We had a seven part series this year, \u201cThe Son of David\u201d. I love to preach Christmas series. We have had a different series almost every year of my ministry. Other preachers have spoken to me of being challenged by preaching at seasons like Christmas. I suspect that perhaps [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[41,42],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-wf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2000,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999\/revisions\/2000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}