Who doesn’t love a festival? The very word conjures up delicious images of parades in the street and enforced non-employment. More of this!
For years at TEMC we have had an annual Festival of the Word in the summer in which some of the best preachers alive have blessed all of us. It’s so glorious in fact we might as well spread it out throughout the year.
The Festival followed the pattern of many north Torontonians for whom the summer was a time of lighter work and long stays at cottages to our north. That pattern is more and more rare as “cottages” increasingly match Toronto home prices and folks who don’t inherit them aren’t going to purchase them. Senior ministers like me in the future will be in Toronto more often in the summer, and if I’m here, I want to preach!
So in future we will spread the Festival of the Word around the year’s calendar. We will strategically bring guest preachers and singers and worship leaders who further our church’s mission whenever they’re available throughout the year. This year, for example, we have already had Nathan Uttangi from Tenth Church and Ray Aldred from the Vancouver School of Theology deliver wise words on risk-taking and enemy-love. If they’re in town and available in February there is no need to put them off until summer.
The Festival of the Word is a great legacy, and one we’ll continue as we can—Donyelle McCrae from Yale Divinity School is slated to come in August and our annual Labour Day sermon from Paul Scott Wilson will follow a few weeks after. But the schedule likely will not be to have our senior minister “off” in July and August and guests invited solely in that time slot.
Ours is a faith of the Word. God does not leave us without Wisdom, in fact, God speaks, and God’s word can be relied upon. That Word is after us, pursuing us, so much so it becomes flesh in the untouched womb of a Jewish teenager from the sticks. We might call the whole church a “festival of the word.” At whatever time of year.