Why does Priscilla Papers publish sermons?
Our decision to publish sermons is a natural result of our desire to be a resource for the local church and its leaders. Nevertheless, providing sermons is not the main service of Priscilla Papers to the church. In fact, since we began publishing sermons in the fall of 2014, we have printed seventy-one articles and only eight sermons.
How might readers use these sermons?
First, we trust that our readers will make use of a published sermon much like they do anything else CBE International provides—by reading it, considering it carefully, allowing it to enrich their egalitarian theology, and ultimately finding ways to live out one or more of the sermon’s ramifications.
Second, many of our readers are preachers—including those who preach weekly for a congregation and those who preach less (or more!) frequently in a variety of settings. For those of you who fall into such categories, we invite you to use the sermons in Priscilla Papers as resources for your preaching. On certain occasions, you might choose to preach one of them largely as you find it in our journal. More frequently, these sermons will spark your thinking, and you will therefore use material from them in less direct ways. Whatever the case, we encourage you to give credit where credit is due—not necessarily to Priscilla Papers itself, but to the authors of the sermons.
This issue of Priscilla Papers opens with a sermon by Tracey Stringer, Pastor of Spiritual Formation at New City Church of Los Angeles. It is a Mother’s Day sermon, and we have printed it here so it will be available in time for Mother’s Day, which is celebrated on the second Sunday of May in nearly 100 nations, and on various other dates, mostly in the spring, in approximately 100 more.
This issue also includes articles by Laura Schilperoort on various perspectives on Christian marriage and by April Kelly on early Christianity’s concept of sexuality. Finally, we have included a critical review of the Nashville Statement. Composed by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in Nashville, Tennessee, in August of 2017, the Nashville Statement is a series of affirmations and denials regarding sexuality. Jamin Hübner has written the critique, which CBE International also recently made available to members of the Evangelical Theological Society at the 2018 ETS meeting in Denver, Colorado.
We hope these writings will enliven all our readers—women and men, single and married. May they be of use to you and your ministries.
