“Do Jesus to the people.” My systematics professor Gerhard Forde would often remind us that when we preach, we are not merely to tell people about Jesus but to do Jesus to the people. Our task in proclaiming the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus is to proclaim words that do what they say: bring forth salvation, forgiveness, and God’s new creation. While we may use teaching, humor, rhetoric, and literary allusion, our ultimate goal must remain clear: to do Jesus to the people.

Preaching is an event within relationship. I remember my mother saying how much better our pastor seemed to preach after he had visited us in our home. Her point was not that our pastor’s message or delivery had changed but that we heard him differently because our relationship with him was growing.

I find the same in my congregation. As my relationship with the people I shepherd grows, I become more responsive to their needs as I prepare to . Even more, the trust between preacher and congregation opens our hearts to the Holy Spirit, who speaks far more eloquently than any earthly preacher.

A sermon is more than a speech — it is a spoken word within the relationship between preacher and hearer, infused by the Holy Spirit. It draws us into God’s Word of scripture and God’s Word incarnate, who is Christ. A sermon may be written into a carefully crafted manuscript, typed into an outline, jotted on a sticky note, or just held in mind. These forms all have their benefits and their drawbacks as they balance formality, precision, and elegance with responsiveness, connectivity, and openness to the present movement of the Holy Spirit. But at its heart, all preaching is a three-way communication between the preacher, the hearer, and God, who is present with us through scripture and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

A sermon creates space for the Holy Spirit to bring faith. I have noticed how eager congregations are to laugh, even at the softest preacher joke. Laughter brings a shared exhale, a release of the drama that builds through the liturgy of the Word. But laughter is not the only way. A story, a fact about the natural world, a glimpse into art or literature or the preacher’s hobby can disarm people, allowing them to breathe.

After this exhalation, a hush sometimes settles over the congregation. This is a holy moment. We dare not interrupt it, but speak lower and slower as the Holy Spirit moves among us, coming uniquely to each . Faith itself is a gift from the Spirit, poured out upon the congregation and the preacher alike, preparing them to receive Christ in the Eucharist.

Sometimes we preach at the very edge of our capacity. St. Paul reminds the Corinthians that he did not come with lofty speech or wisdom. Rather in weakness, fear, and much trembling, he proclaimed Jesus Christ and him crucified. His proclamation relied not on earthly wisdom but on the demonstration of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s power (1 Cor. 2:1-4). Paul may protest too much; his letters are highly sophisticated, both theologically and rhetorically. However, his point stands. The Gospel’s power is not in our words but in God’s Logos, which fills our often-inadequate words. Paul reminds us, “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).

We are sometimes called to preach at the edge of our capacity. We speak haltingly in the face of the pain and sorrow of our congregation, or our ideas come out more like abstract art than fine exposition as we deal with Scriptures and spiritual truths that are beyond our understanding. I think of Paul’s attempt to describe the transformative reality of new creation breaking into the present through Jesus’ resurrection and the work of the Spirit. He finally stutters to a halt, exclaiming, “New things!” (2 Cor. 5:17).

Preaching is a holy calling that transforms the preacher as much as the congregation. It is a duty and a delight, a rhythm of submitting to God through prayer, study, and care for those we shepherd. It calls forth our passion for God, creativity, intellect, and love for others — while God’s grace adds even more: the power of God poured out through the Holy Spirit.

May we faithfully proclaim Christ crucified and do Jesus to the people, speaking words that do what they say. May we cultivate relationships and seek times of renewal, trusting that God is doing more than we can ask for or imagine. Let us pray for one another and cheer each other on in this wonderful, challenging calling.

The boy carefully laid out small rugs end-to-end across the floor, honoring the handmade materials that are used to teach the holy stories of our faith. The girl followed him, setting up the hand-painted dioramas and figures that correspond to each story. The Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth of Jesus, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Presentation in the Temple, the Magi, and the Flight into Egypt — one by one she carefully set them out.

Before this Advent, I had never spent entire class periods in our Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Atria (classrooms), and I was fascinated and blessed by the experience. On this day, I watched as the girl paused to consider which order the narratives should follow: was the Presentation in the Temple before or after the coming of the Magi? Our traditional children’s Christmas pageants portray the Magi arriving at the manger just after the shepherds and the angels, but this little girl knew there is more to the story. She placed the diorama and figures of the Presentation in the Temple before the Magi arrived, having learned that the Presentation happened 40 days after Jesus’ birth, before the Epiphany, when we celebrate the coming of the Magi.

When the children had finished arranging the narratives, our whole class gathered on the rug to admire them. The catechist asked, “How did you know that today we were going to be talking about the Visitation?” The girl replied, “I didn’t know. I haven’t been to church for a while. Last time I came, I put the infancy narratives out of order. I wanted to see if I could put them in order.” Placing the infancy narratives in order takes both scriptural and liturgical sophistication, and this child remembered even after an extended absence.

We gazed at the dioramas, and someone noticed the small doves the girl had carefully placed in the rafters of several of the dioramas. The catechist said, “Tell us about the doves.” The girl replied, “I saw the basket of doves and decided to put them in the scenes, like the Annunciation, where the Holy Spirit comes.”

From the care shown to the learning materials, to the nuanced understanding of the timeline, to the placement of the doves, this child shared with all of us a sophisticated understanding and spiritual appreciation of the infancy narratives, absorbed through the meditative and purposeful work of catechesis. Our catechist tells adults who wonder what happens in catechesis, “If we can get the faith into the children when they are small, then even if they or their parents quit coming to church for a while, their faith will be there when they need it.” Deep faith nurtured in small children is a foundation that will always support them, whatever life brings.

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is a way, and a good way, that many churches till the soil of their children’s spirits. Through it we offer our children an often profound engagement with Scripture, sacraments, and liturgy. Time in the Atria looks different than traditional didactic Sunday School classes with which our parish leaders and parents might be familiar. As I have learned from our catechists, this is by design.

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is a Montessori-based faith formation program developed by Sofia Cavalletti and Gianna Goobi in Rome beginning in the 1950s. It is born from the joy of a child’s encounter with God. CGS is based on the belief that God and the child are already in relationship. Children grow in their relationship with God through a deep engagement in Scripture, the sacraments, and liturgy. Because of this, the class periods have the character of self-directed contemplative play through which children enjoy God.

This Advent I noticed some other things about CGS as well:

A CGS Atrium is a space in which parents can disciple their children and be discipled themselves. As I moved between  classes, I noticed parents who had stayed with their children. It is the ultimate homeschooling experience for busy families. The parent and child would be together on the floor or at a table, enjoying one another, contemplating a lesson together, respecting one another and resting together in God’s presence. This is profoundly healing for children and parents who are disconnected, anxious, and stressed. This is a space in which parents can be supported in connecting with their children and taking up their healthy, authoritative role as the primary disciple-makers of their children.

A CGS Atrium  is a space in which children with special physical, neurological, and emotional needs can flourish. At St. Paul’s, we have seen an influx of children who struggle to flourish in traditional classrooms. In an Atrium, children spend much of their time in self-directed work. They are empowered to choose what they would like to do and go where their curiosity leads. They learn self-regulation as they attend to the needs of their bodies to sit on the floor, stand at a station, or move quietly, and as they focus on a work, care for the physical objects, and return their station to the way they found it. There are a wide variety of works that can accommodate children with a variety of interests and physical and learning needs. Children are supported in their emotional needs as they rest in intimacy with God and the attentiveness of their catechists.

CGS engages children, youth, and teens with liturgy and doctrine. This spring, a catechist sent me a video clip of our small children learning about the Eucharist. They had chosen to set the altar. A robed “deacon” was holding the Gospel book over her head. A “celebrant” held a Missal and launched into chanting the sursum corda. The children had noticed that the priests had begun chanting the sursum corda on Easter two weeks earlier, and they sang it too. In another video clip, the children had gathered around an “intercessor” holding a book and praying the Prayers of the People, even mentioning people from our regular Sunday prayer list.

This careful observance of the liturgy does not stop in catechesis, however. In worship, our teens who have gone through CGS often sit together in the front row. They have been deeply formed into the sacraments. One, after visiting another church that did not add water to the wine, exclaimed with exasperation, “How are we reminded of the dual nature of Christ if there is not water in the wine?” Our youths’ appreciation for our liturgy continues as the youth group leads itself in Evening Prayer or Compline each Sunday night (it prefers Compline).

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is in many ways countercultural. It is a place for children and their parents to slow down and enjoy God and one another in the midst of a busy life. It is a place where handmade materials fabricated by our church members are preferred over store-bought. It is a place for curiosity, contemplation, and relationship, where content is absorbed through play more than taught. It is a place where the spiritual soil of our children’s lives is tilled deeply and with great care. I am grateful to have spent these few hours during Advent, preparing with our children for the coming of our newborn King.

A frog laid her eggs in our fountain. The resulting tadpoles are getting their back legs now. I’m hoping they will mature before the weather turns cold. A cover crop of red clover is sprouting, and although the days are too short for it to bloom, the roots and leaves will build the soil as they compost over the winter. Baby lettuce is growing. The plants will overwinter, and in mid-February we’ll enjoy the first green leaves — a foretaste of the feast to come.

With the changing of the seasons comes death, but also the promise of rebirth. This time of year we are face to face with death in the natural world. In fact, those of us who garden are death doulas of a sort. But as winter comes and the days shorten, this confrontation with physical mortality can also become a dehumanizing force. Capital-D Death reigns, both in the decay of our bodies and also as we suffer loneliness and search for identity in sex, work, political and social realms, and fail to find our identity in any of these.

Bent on capturing territory, Death steals our identity. It dehumanizes our institutions. It poisons relationships, setting people one against the other. Death fuels the fires of distrust, leading people to the depths of despair as it sabotages any attempts to build community. Death makes a mockery of God, faith, and the gift of life. It is no wonder that we and our congregations reel in the face of Death.

Our generation is neither the first nor the last to struggle with Death. Until he was gripped by grace, Martin Luther lived as one desperately troubled by the depth of Sin and Death he found both in his body and in the church. Luther struggled with Death and finally, throwing himself on God’s grace at the foot of the cross, found new life in Christ.

And so it was that Luther stumbled upon a third kind of death — the Death that strips us bare and leaves our dry bones clattering. In this Death, God comes to us hidden under the sign of the opposite. In these times, love feels like discipline, freedom feels like slavery, and the call to righteousness feels like condemnation. We come to the end of ourselves, to the end of our self-esteem, and to the death of our ego.

At this very moment when we become nothing, the door to the third, redemptive form of death opens. When all human possibilities have been exhausted, we are gathered into death in Christ. From things that have become nothing, God creates anew.

This is the foolishness of the cross. This is the foolishness upon which we stake our lives, and, as Christian leaders, the foolishness upon which we stake our life’s work. We have been called to proclaim Christ and him crucified, bringing people with us to the foot of his cross.

In baptism, we have our first and most profound rebirth into God’s new creation. St. Paul reminds us, “when you were buried with [Christ] in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col. 2:12). Throughout our lives, we enter anew into this profound mystery through our little deaths and resurrections.

Our new life in Christ deepens as we are claimed again and again by our crucified and risen Lord. In what reads like a rhapsodic love letter, Gerhard Forde describes emerging into new life, saying it is

not like accomplishing something but like dying and coming to life. It is not like earning something but more like falling in love. It is not the attainment of a long-sought goal, the arrival at the end of a process, but the beginning of something absolutely new, something never before heard or entertained.

Is not this the new life we have been thirsting for?

We have difficult work ahead of us. We have dying to do. We have congregations that perceive themselves to be in the throes of death. Our towns are full of people who have been so challenged by the powers of Death that they have lost their sense of themselves. We have lifelong members who have never known themselves to be beloved children of God, saints created in God’s image and redeemed by Christ’s sacrificial love.

Words alone are not enough to bring life to these dead bones. Only Jesus, the Word made flesh, can call us into new life. Only Jesus can unite us with his redeeming death, breaking the power of Death as we encounter the cross with him. Only Jesus can bring our bodies and our spirits into his resurrection life, securing our identities as beloved children of God and heirs of God’s reign. Only Jesus can call us into our life’s work, which is simply living each day in him instead of Death.

We are invited to enter into this economy of death and new life. We are invited to lay down our egos, our striving, and all the things to which we cling that are not Christ. Jesus beckons us, “Come.” Jesus gathers us to himself at the cross where he overcame the power of Sin and Death — for the world, and for us.

As our eldest child is preparing to leave home for college this fall, I have been reflecting on these precious years with our children at home. We have had good seasons and challenging seasons. We are grateful for all of it. But the seasons with the most joyful memories are those when we have been intentional about mission together as a family.

When the kids were small, we invited my husband’s whole congregation to do life with us. We adopted a rhythm of a weekly potluck meal and worship, along with monthly outreach to our neighborhood.

Every week we opened our home for Sunday Supper. Our mantra was “Lightweight, Low Maintenance.” We became adept at sweeping craft projects and papers into a laundry basket, pushing the toys into a bucket, and giving the bathroom a quick once-over. We also grew in the spiritual grace and discipline of opening our home.

As we prepared each week, we pulled out our stack of plates and plastic cups, a basket of plastic cutlery (plastic because the stainless steel sometimes ended up in the trash), put a frozen lasagna in the oven, and prayed together that people would experience God’s kingdom in our home. Sometimes 40 people came, and sometimes we had just one or two.

After dinner, someone would share a Scripture passage that had spoken to them that week and we sang camp songs. We learned to give the kids small boxes of Nerds candy to use as percussion to accompany the singing and as a sweet going-home snack. After 75 minutes of meal, conversation, singing, and prayer, everyone went home. These evenings strengthened us because they were predictable, short, easy, and joyfully social.

Every fourth week, our group found a way to bless our neighbors. We sorted food at the local food bank. We went on prayer walks. We set up a caramel apple-making station in our garage one Halloween. We opened our home to the kids of the neighborhood, especially the kids whose home lives were unstable.

Later, when we moved to Nashville, we invited church members for Monday Supper and to befriend artists struggling with homelessness. We connected with a local non-profit that provided studio space for the artists. Monthly we shared a potluck meal at the studio, where we admired the art our friends were creating and spent time in their space. At times our members invited an artist friend to stay in their home for respite. During that season, most Monday nights saw the kids bouncing on the trampoline and playing four square while the adults chatted on the patio.

This pattern of living life and sharing a mission together is based on the New Testament concept of oikos: the ancient Greek household, the basic unit of society. It also is the root for economy (oikonomos). The oikos was the extended family that lived and worked together, with mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, servants, and apprentices all sharing life in the family compound, where they lived and practiced their trade. This model of life together includes all those single and married, young and old.

Rodney Stark posits in The Rise of Christianity that, during the early centuries after Jesus’ resurrection, Christianity grew exponentially because it spread from household to household, with one oikos evangelizing and baptizing a neighboring oikos. This is the story of the early church in Philippi, for example. Lydia and her household were converted and baptized, followed quickly by others, including the jailer and his entire household (Acts 16).

According to Stark’s research, in the three centuries between Jesus’ resurrection and Constantine’s conversion, the Church expanded from perhaps 1,000 Christians in A.D. 40 (.0017% of the Roman Empire) to nearly 34 million Christians in A.D. 350 (more than half of the Roman Empire). While preaching campaigns like St. Peter’s and missionary tours like St. Paul’s certainly built the church and produced its theological underpinnings, the evangelization of entire households, oikos to oikos, fueled the 40 percent growth per decade. This exponential growth is close to the average growth rate the Latter-day Saints Church maintained during the 20th century (43% per decade).

In the years since we began experimenting with oikos, our family has treasured our friends who include us in their households. Friends in Arizona moved into neighboring houses and, as they shared their lives and faith, discovered a gift for healing prayer. My husband, Michael, was healed of his headaches during one visit with them.

Friends in South Africa have gathered community around themselves as they seek justice and reconciliation for their city that suffers from some of the greatest economic disparity in the world. We are always hungry to spend more time with them.

Where we live right now, the children of the neighborhood have established themselves as the Cul-de-Sac Kids. The children pray for our neighborhood, serve neighbors by watering flowers and taking care of pets, and reach out to us with cookies, Scripture verses printed on cards, and other handmade gifts. We are amazed how they will come to our house with just the right encouragement for the day.

These households share common practices: (1) regular rhythms of simple meal fellowship, (2) household prayer and worship, (3) a common mission to a neighborhood, community in need, or relational network, and (4) dependence on the Holy Spirit. These households imitate the common life of the early Church, when Jesus’ disciples “day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people” (Acts 2:46-47).

This is a profoundly countercultural way to organize our life together, and at the same time, it is immensely attractive to people in our lonely generation. These patterns can be challenging to live long-term, precisely because our culture resists people living connected, missionary lives in a Christian household. Despite the challenges, the years my family have committed to these patterns have been the most satisfying and most fulfilling. We take inspiration and gain endurance from friends around us who share this vision for life together.

The writer of Hebrews urges us on: “Since, therefore, we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses … let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith . . . Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares (Heb. 12:1-2, 28-13:2).

In 1992, President Václav Havel of Czechoslovakia wrote an Opinion piece for The New York Times that electrified its readership. “The end of Communism is, first and foremost, a message to the human race,” Havel wrote. “It is a message we have not yet fully deciphered and comprehended. In its deepest sense, the end of Communism has brought a major era in human history to an end. It has brought an end not just to the 19th and 20th centuries, but to the modern age as a whole.”

More than 30 years later, we still grapple with the end of the modern age. Today, many things indicate we are going through a long transitional period when something is on its way out and something else is painfully being born. The old ways, relationships, and institutions are crumbling, decaying, and exhausting themselves, while something else, still indistinct, is rising from the rubble. To see, we have only to set our eyes on the decades of intractable wars around the world, increasing incoherence and violence in our nation, the breakdown of communities, and in our churches, an acceleration of the effects of the end of Christendom.

In these past months, a line from John O’Donohue’s Blessing for the Interim Time has stayed with me: “The old is not old enough to have died away; The new is still too young to be born.” We know enough to know that things will never return to the way they were, but what is being born is still in many ways shrouded in uncertainty. With God’s grace, perhaps we can be hopeful enough to trust that what is being born is God’s kingdom among us, the crucified and risen Lord in our midst.

But how do we, leaders of churches and institutions, lead our people into the future that is waiting to be born? It is clear that technical change is not going to move us into the future. The problems we face are not going to be fixed by expertise and good management. Our techniques are failing us.

Likewise, adaptive change will only offer us partial release. Innovation and learning in our institutions will help, but the problem is bigger than changes in our processes and strategies will solve.

So where do we go for help? How do we find the path into the new future God has for us? The only way forward is through the transformation of our institutions, which starts with the transformation of our communities, and of ourselves as leaders. Nothing short of new hearts will bring us into the new life God is creating for us. Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, calls this profound change. Profound change is “shifting the inner place from which we operate, both as individuals and communities.” Profound change comes from transforming hearts — our hearts and the hearts of the institutions we serve.

There is biblical precedent for this kind of change. The transformation of the heart and the renewing of the mind in Christ, profound change, is the promise of the coming of God’s kingdom. As St. Paul reminds us,

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Col. 1:15-20)

The old world may be dying, but in Christ new life is rising from the rubble. When God’s kingdom comes, all things will be made new. The heart of all things will be returned from Christ. The reconciling work that began on the cross continues now and will be fulfilled at the end.

But how do we become leaders who can lead profound change? The key is in our own openness to transformation. Our ability to lead resides in our willingness to daily engage in the transformational acts of dying in Christ and being raised anew with him. St. Paul encourages us to present ourselves daily — as individuals and as communities — the body of Christ — into God’s transforming power. Our lives and our organizations are changed as we daily let go of conformity to the world and let come the vision of God’s new kingdom.

St. Paul offers us this encouragement:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom. 12:1-2)

The transformation of our hearts and minds, as individuals, but also the transformation of the heart of every power, every principality, every institution, every family, every neighborhood, is the transformation that God has already begun in the cross and resurrection of Christ. It is the transformation that God delights to continue daily in us. It is transformation that will finally be consummated at the end.

The essence of our task as leaders is to shift the inner place from which we operate, both individually and as communities. Our task right now is to seek the renewal of our hearts and minds, and to be open to the new future that God is preparing to birth.

Our call as leaders in this moment is to attend to the heart of things. We are called to attend to our hearts, to the hearts of the families and institutions we serve. We are called to create spaces where God shifts the inner place from which we operate — transforming our hearts and renewing our minds more and more into the fullness of Christ.