Coming To The Light
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
Stories to Live By: "God Will Keep Your Life"
Shining Moments: "Born Again" by Kathy Raines
Good Stories: "One More Time" by Jo Perry-Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: "Coming to the Light" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
Our children used to watch "Nick at Nite," the evening version of the cable channel Nickelodeon, which airs old TV series -- including, ironically, the very shows from the '60s we grew up watching: Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith, Gilligan's Island, and The Beverly Hillbillies, to name just a few favorites. They seemed to enjoy them as much as we did when we were their age. It gave us something to talk and laugh about, a common language, which is no small thing when you are concerned parents working hard at communicating with your kids.
In this week's Gospel lesson we meet another "Nick at Nite," an old scriptural rerun which still plays well today, a story worth telling to your kids. They may one day find themselves looking for truth in the dark.
Check out the reflections on Nicodemus in this week's Scrap Pile. And if you are preaching on the psalm next Sunday, you will enjoy the sermon starters in Stories to Live By.
Stories to Live By
God Will Keep Your Life
The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and coming in from this time on and forevermore.
Psalm 121:7-8
A medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center writes: "Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down, and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told her that she better bring her daughter into the emergency room right away."
***********
A true story out of San Francisco: A man, wanting to rob a downtown Bank of America, walked into the branch and wrote "this iz a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag." While standing in line, waiting to give his note to the teller, he began to worry that someone had seen him write the note and might call the police before he reached the teller's window. So he left the Bank of America and crossed the street to Wells Fargo. After waiting a few minutes in line, he handed his note to the Wells Fargo teller. She read it, and surmising from his spelling errors that he wasn't the brightest light in the harbor, told him that she could not accept his stickup note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America. Looking somewhat defeated, the man said "OK" and left. He was arrested a few minutes later, as he was waiting in line back at Bank of America.
(God has to work overtime to keep some people.)
*************
God Knows Just What We Need
A woman was at work when she received a phone call informing her that her daughter was very sick with a fever. She left her work and stopped by the pharmacy to get some medication for her daughter.
Upon returning to her car, she found that she had locked her keys inside the car. She was in a hurry to get home to her sick daughter. She didn't know what to do, so she called home and told the baby-sitter what had happened and that she did not know what to do.
The baby-sitter told her that her daughter was getting worse. She said, "You might find a coat hanger and use that to open the door." The woman looked around and found an old rusty coat hanger that had been thrown down on the ground, possibly by someone else who at some time or other had locked their keys in their car. Then she looked at the hanger and said, "I don't know how to use this." So she bowed her head and asked God to send her some help.
Within five minutes an old rusty car pulled up, with a dirty, greasy, bearded man who was wearing an old biker skull rag on his head. The woman thought, "This is what you sent to help me?" But she was desperate, so she was also very thankful.
The man got out of his car and asked her if he could help. She said, "Yes, my daughter is very sick. I stopped to get her some medication and I locked my keys in my car. I must get home to her. Please, can you use this hanger to unlock my car?"
He said, "Sure." He walked over to the car, and in less than one minute the car was opened.
She hugged the man, and through her tears she said, "Thank you so much! You are a very nice man."
The man replied, "Lady, I am not a nice man. I just got out of prison yesterday. I was in prison for car theft, and I have only been out less than 24 hours."
The woman hugged the man again, and with sobbing tears cried out loud, "Oh, thank you, God! You sent me a professional!"
Shining Moments
Born Again
by Kathy Raines
Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."
John 3:3
Larry lived across the street from the church in a low-income apartment complex. Several years before my husband and I came to the church as pastors, Larry had been in a very bad motorcycle accident. It wasn't certain that he would even live, but he did survive -- with extensive brain damage. He learned to walk again, and most Sundays he would hobble across the street, with a bow-legged walk, to church. He'd climb the stairs and come into our adult Sunday school class, which met an hour before worship.
Many in the class were leaders of the church. Most of the owners of the town's Main Street businesses were active members of the church. Some had been coming to the church for over 50 years. The Sunday school class members were literally doctors, lawyers, car dealers, and other prominent businessmen and women. Larry could not read and could barely write his name on the attendance pad. His sole subject of interest for conversation was motorcycles. I don't remember the topic at Sunday school that day, but we had veered into a discussion of worship. And then Larry blurted out, "I come to church because God saved my life."
Kathy Raines is pastor of Jefferson United Methodist Church in Jefferson, Oregon. Kathy earned a Master of Divinity degree from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio in 1988. She is married to Rev. John David Raines and they are the parents of two children.
Good Stories
One More Time
by Jo Perry-Sumwalt
Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you."... So Abram went, as the Lord had told him...
Genesis 12:1, 4a
The bright sun on the leaves and the breeze stirring the treetops outside the unshaded picture window were inviting. It was a perfect morning to go out and explore the neighborhood. But nine packing boxes, in combination with the pieces of furniture pushed here and there, left only little walkways through the living room. First things first.
The massive upright piano was the first thing to consider. Once in place it wouldn't be moved again. The movers had put it in the north corner, next to the picture window, but nothing fit around it there. On the west wall it was right next to the fireplace, and the south wall was about six inches too short for it; damn whoever enlarged the doorway to the dining room! So the east wall it would have to be, for good. The south wall was the only place where the television could be seen from all of the rest of the room anyway, and there was something comfortable about placing the sofa next to the fireplace.
Funny, every time it came down to only one logical arrangement for the furniture, no matter what the size or shape of the living room. The recliner and the rose-colored wingback chair would fit the north side of the room in front of the picture window, with a lamp between them on an end table. Then the pole lamp, placed to the right of the sofa, would also light the recliner. There was even room in the corner behind them for the spinning wheel. The furniture had fit, one more time, but the boxes still waited. More hands would certainly be helpful.
If only the phone would ring. If only someone would suggest taking a walk or having coffee. The sunlight was still playing with the shadows in the trees, and the breeze still blew. It was probably blowing through the trees in the yard at home, too.
Scrap Pile
Coming to the Light
by John Sumwalt
Text: John 3:1-9, 19-21
Have you ever done something completely out of character, something that would astound your family and friends -- who if they knew you were doing it would say something to the effect of "Well, that doesn't sound like the Mary we know"? The man in our story does something completely out of character; something that not only would have astounded his family and friends if they knew, but would have mortified them.
Nicodemus was a man of some substance in Jerusalem. He had property, wealth, position, power, respect -- and with all of this a religion that gave him all of the answers. All he had to do was follow the well laid out rules of his religion, and he was set for a good life. Yet Nicodemus was a troubled man. There was something lacking in his life, something crucial, without which all of the other things he had acquired and accomplished meant nothing.
Do you know the feeling?
Do you know what it's like to feel an emptiness in the center of your being -- a hungry gnawing in the pit of your soul that demands sustenance? You might ignore it for awhile, perhaps for years, but sooner or later it demands attention. The emptiness, the gnawing, the hunger become a consuming passion. Where do you turn? What do you do?
Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, told of a time in his life when he contemplated suicide.
"During the whole of the year, when I was asking myself almost every minute whether I should or should not put an end to it all with a cord or a pistol... my heart was oppressed by a tormenting feeling. This feeling I cannot describe otherwise than a searching after God.
"This searching after a God was not an act of my reason, but a feeling, and I say this advisedly, because it was opposed to my way of thinking; it came from the heart. It was a feeling of dread, an orphanhood, of isolation amid things all apart from me, and of hope in a help I knew not from."
We often misinterpret this craving as a need for food or drink or companionship or love, and we seek satisfaction in friendship or a lover, in our work, in success. If we can do something important, contribute something to the world, make our family secure, get a piece of the rock and have some real power and authority... then maybe...
Then, like Nicodemus, when we have had all these things we discover that the emptiness is still there. What to do?
William Barclay says, "Nicodemus is up against the eternal problem of a person who wants to be changed but cannot change himself."
John Wesley turned to good works and to a more rigorous religious life. He wrote of his dark night of the soul:
"I began to alter the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a new life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I communicated every week. I watched against all sin, whether in word or in deed. I began to aim at and pray for inward holiness.... I began visiting the prisons, assisting the poor and sick in town, and doing what other good I could, by my presence or my little fortune, to the bodies and souls of all men. Yet when, after continuing some years in this course, I apprehended myself to be near death, I could not find that all this gave me any comfort or any assurance of acceptance with God." (Excerpt from The Journal of John Wesley, A.M., edited by Nehemiah Curnock; cited in Conversions, edited by Hugh T. Kerr & John M. Mulder, Eerdmans, 1983, pp. 56-57.)
Have you been there? Have you ever prayed, "What else can I do, Lord? Nothing I do seems to be enough"?
Perhaps that is where Nicodemus was when his search led him to Jesus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and to the Pharisees there was only one way to the kingdom of God: by keeping the Law of Moses, by observing every detail of that law, by hard work; by your own good work, by faithfulness in attending the temple, by eating only clean food, by keeping the Sabbath, and by avoiding contact with sinners and Gentiles.
The Pharisees believed that if all Israel would keep the law perfectly for one day, the kingdom of God would come. If only everybody would come to worship, if only everybody would pay their pledge and sign up for the nursery, of only we could get more people to sing in the choir -- sound familiar?
It wasn't enough. Getting more religion and living more religiously is never enough. So Nicodemus found himself knocking on Jesus' door in the dark of night.
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and e-mail the story to us.
**************
New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. (Click on the title for information about how to order.) Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Anne Sunday, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
You can order any of our books on the CSS website; they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e-mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1-800-241-4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419-227-1818.)
**************
About the Editors
John E. Sumwalt is the pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, and is the author of eight books for CSS. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), John received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for Parish Ministry from UDTS in 1997. John is known in the Milwaukee area for his one-minute radio spots which always include a brief story. He concludes each spot by saying, "I'm John Sumwalt with 'A Story to Live By' from Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church."
John has done numerous storytelling events for civic, school, and church groups, as well as on radio and television. He has performed at a number of fundraisers for the homeless, the hungry, Habitat for Humanity, and women's shelters. Since the fall of 1999, when he began working on the Vision Stories series, he has led seminars and retreats around the themes "A Safe Place to Tell Visions," "Vision Stories in the Bible and Today," and coming this spring: "Soul Growth: Discovering Lost Spiritual Dimensions." To schedule a seminar or a retreat, write to jsumwalt@naspa.net or phone 414-257-1228.
Joanne Perry-Sumwalt is director of Christian Education at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee. Jo is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, with a degree in English and writing. She has co-authored two books with John, Life Stories: A Study In Christian Decision Making and Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit: 62 Stories For Cycle B. Jo writes original curriculum for church classes. She also serves as the secretary of the Wisconsin chapter of the Christian Educators Fellowship (CEF), and is a member of the National CEF.
Jo and John have been married since 1975. They have two grown children, Kathryn and Orrin. They both love reading, movies, long walks with Chloe (their West Highland Terrier), and working on their old farmhouse in southwest Wisconsin.
**********************************************
StoryShare, February 20, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
What's Up This Week
Stories to Live By: "God Will Keep Your Life"
Shining Moments: "Born Again" by Kathy Raines
Good Stories: "One More Time" by Jo Perry-Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: "Coming to the Light" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
Our children used to watch "Nick at Nite," the evening version of the cable channel Nickelodeon, which airs old TV series -- including, ironically, the very shows from the '60s we grew up watching: Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith, Gilligan's Island, and The Beverly Hillbillies, to name just a few favorites. They seemed to enjoy them as much as we did when we were their age. It gave us something to talk and laugh about, a common language, which is no small thing when you are concerned parents working hard at communicating with your kids.
In this week's Gospel lesson we meet another "Nick at Nite," an old scriptural rerun which still plays well today, a story worth telling to your kids. They may one day find themselves looking for truth in the dark.
Check out the reflections on Nicodemus in this week's Scrap Pile. And if you are preaching on the psalm next Sunday, you will enjoy the sermon starters in Stories to Live By.
Stories to Live By
God Will Keep Your Life
The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and coming in from this time on and forevermore.
Psalm 121:7-8
A medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center writes: "Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down, and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told her that she better bring her daughter into the emergency room right away."
***********
A true story out of San Francisco: A man, wanting to rob a downtown Bank of America, walked into the branch and wrote "this iz a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag." While standing in line, waiting to give his note to the teller, he began to worry that someone had seen him write the note and might call the police before he reached the teller's window. So he left the Bank of America and crossed the street to Wells Fargo. After waiting a few minutes in line, he handed his note to the Wells Fargo teller. She read it, and surmising from his spelling errors that he wasn't the brightest light in the harbor, told him that she could not accept his stickup note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America. Looking somewhat defeated, the man said "OK" and left. He was arrested a few minutes later, as he was waiting in line back at Bank of America.
(God has to work overtime to keep some people.)
*************
God Knows Just What We Need
A woman was at work when she received a phone call informing her that her daughter was very sick with a fever. She left her work and stopped by the pharmacy to get some medication for her daughter.
Upon returning to her car, she found that she had locked her keys inside the car. She was in a hurry to get home to her sick daughter. She didn't know what to do, so she called home and told the baby-sitter what had happened and that she did not know what to do.
The baby-sitter told her that her daughter was getting worse. She said, "You might find a coat hanger and use that to open the door." The woman looked around and found an old rusty coat hanger that had been thrown down on the ground, possibly by someone else who at some time or other had locked their keys in their car. Then she looked at the hanger and said, "I don't know how to use this." So she bowed her head and asked God to send her some help.
Within five minutes an old rusty car pulled up, with a dirty, greasy, bearded man who was wearing an old biker skull rag on his head. The woman thought, "This is what you sent to help me?" But she was desperate, so she was also very thankful.
The man got out of his car and asked her if he could help. She said, "Yes, my daughter is very sick. I stopped to get her some medication and I locked my keys in my car. I must get home to her. Please, can you use this hanger to unlock my car?"
He said, "Sure." He walked over to the car, and in less than one minute the car was opened.
She hugged the man, and through her tears she said, "Thank you so much! You are a very nice man."
The man replied, "Lady, I am not a nice man. I just got out of prison yesterday. I was in prison for car theft, and I have only been out less than 24 hours."
The woman hugged the man again, and with sobbing tears cried out loud, "Oh, thank you, God! You sent me a professional!"
Shining Moments
Born Again
by Kathy Raines
Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."
John 3:3
Larry lived across the street from the church in a low-income apartment complex. Several years before my husband and I came to the church as pastors, Larry had been in a very bad motorcycle accident. It wasn't certain that he would even live, but he did survive -- with extensive brain damage. He learned to walk again, and most Sundays he would hobble across the street, with a bow-legged walk, to church. He'd climb the stairs and come into our adult Sunday school class, which met an hour before worship.
Many in the class were leaders of the church. Most of the owners of the town's Main Street businesses were active members of the church. Some had been coming to the church for over 50 years. The Sunday school class members were literally doctors, lawyers, car dealers, and other prominent businessmen and women. Larry could not read and could barely write his name on the attendance pad. His sole subject of interest for conversation was motorcycles. I don't remember the topic at Sunday school that day, but we had veered into a discussion of worship. And then Larry blurted out, "I come to church because God saved my life."
Kathy Raines is pastor of Jefferson United Methodist Church in Jefferson, Oregon. Kathy earned a Master of Divinity degree from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio in 1988. She is married to Rev. John David Raines and they are the parents of two children.
Good Stories
One More Time
by Jo Perry-Sumwalt
Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you."... So Abram went, as the Lord had told him...
Genesis 12:1, 4a
The bright sun on the leaves and the breeze stirring the treetops outside the unshaded picture window were inviting. It was a perfect morning to go out and explore the neighborhood. But nine packing boxes, in combination with the pieces of furniture pushed here and there, left only little walkways through the living room. First things first.
The massive upright piano was the first thing to consider. Once in place it wouldn't be moved again. The movers had put it in the north corner, next to the picture window, but nothing fit around it there. On the west wall it was right next to the fireplace, and the south wall was about six inches too short for it; damn whoever enlarged the doorway to the dining room! So the east wall it would have to be, for good. The south wall was the only place where the television could be seen from all of the rest of the room anyway, and there was something comfortable about placing the sofa next to the fireplace.
Funny, every time it came down to only one logical arrangement for the furniture, no matter what the size or shape of the living room. The recliner and the rose-colored wingback chair would fit the north side of the room in front of the picture window, with a lamp between them on an end table. Then the pole lamp, placed to the right of the sofa, would also light the recliner. There was even room in the corner behind them for the spinning wheel. The furniture had fit, one more time, but the boxes still waited. More hands would certainly be helpful.
If only the phone would ring. If only someone would suggest taking a walk or having coffee. The sunlight was still playing with the shadows in the trees, and the breeze still blew. It was probably blowing through the trees in the yard at home, too.
Scrap Pile
Coming to the Light
by John Sumwalt
Text: John 3:1-9, 19-21
Have you ever done something completely out of character, something that would astound your family and friends -- who if they knew you were doing it would say something to the effect of "Well, that doesn't sound like the Mary we know"? The man in our story does something completely out of character; something that not only would have astounded his family and friends if they knew, but would have mortified them.
Nicodemus was a man of some substance in Jerusalem. He had property, wealth, position, power, respect -- and with all of this a religion that gave him all of the answers. All he had to do was follow the well laid out rules of his religion, and he was set for a good life. Yet Nicodemus was a troubled man. There was something lacking in his life, something crucial, without which all of the other things he had acquired and accomplished meant nothing.
Do you know the feeling?
Do you know what it's like to feel an emptiness in the center of your being -- a hungry gnawing in the pit of your soul that demands sustenance? You might ignore it for awhile, perhaps for years, but sooner or later it demands attention. The emptiness, the gnawing, the hunger become a consuming passion. Where do you turn? What do you do?
Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, told of a time in his life when he contemplated suicide.
"During the whole of the year, when I was asking myself almost every minute whether I should or should not put an end to it all with a cord or a pistol... my heart was oppressed by a tormenting feeling. This feeling I cannot describe otherwise than a searching after God.
"This searching after a God was not an act of my reason, but a feeling, and I say this advisedly, because it was opposed to my way of thinking; it came from the heart. It was a feeling of dread, an orphanhood, of isolation amid things all apart from me, and of hope in a help I knew not from."
We often misinterpret this craving as a need for food or drink or companionship or love, and we seek satisfaction in friendship or a lover, in our work, in success. If we can do something important, contribute something to the world, make our family secure, get a piece of the rock and have some real power and authority... then maybe...
Then, like Nicodemus, when we have had all these things we discover that the emptiness is still there. What to do?
William Barclay says, "Nicodemus is up against the eternal problem of a person who wants to be changed but cannot change himself."
John Wesley turned to good works and to a more rigorous religious life. He wrote of his dark night of the soul:
"I began to alter the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a new life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I communicated every week. I watched against all sin, whether in word or in deed. I began to aim at and pray for inward holiness.... I began visiting the prisons, assisting the poor and sick in town, and doing what other good I could, by my presence or my little fortune, to the bodies and souls of all men. Yet when, after continuing some years in this course, I apprehended myself to be near death, I could not find that all this gave me any comfort or any assurance of acceptance with God." (Excerpt from The Journal of John Wesley, A.M., edited by Nehemiah Curnock; cited in Conversions, edited by Hugh T. Kerr & John M. Mulder, Eerdmans, 1983, pp. 56-57.)
Have you been there? Have you ever prayed, "What else can I do, Lord? Nothing I do seems to be enough"?
Perhaps that is where Nicodemus was when his search led him to Jesus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and to the Pharisees there was only one way to the kingdom of God: by keeping the Law of Moses, by observing every detail of that law, by hard work; by your own good work, by faithfulness in attending the temple, by eating only clean food, by keeping the Sabbath, and by avoiding contact with sinners and Gentiles.
The Pharisees believed that if all Israel would keep the law perfectly for one day, the kingdom of God would come. If only everybody would come to worship, if only everybody would pay their pledge and sign up for the nursery, of only we could get more people to sing in the choir -- sound familiar?
It wasn't enough. Getting more religion and living more religiously is never enough. So Nicodemus found himself knocking on Jesus' door in the dark of night.
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and e-mail the story to us.
**************
New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. (Click on the title for information about how to order.) Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Anne Sunday, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
You can order any of our books on the CSS website; they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e-mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1-800-241-4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419-227-1818.)
**************
About the Editors
John E. Sumwalt is the pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, and is the author of eight books for CSS. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), John received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for Parish Ministry from UDTS in 1997. John is known in the Milwaukee area for his one-minute radio spots which always include a brief story. He concludes each spot by saying, "I'm John Sumwalt with 'A Story to Live By' from Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church."
John has done numerous storytelling events for civic, school, and church groups, as well as on radio and television. He has performed at a number of fundraisers for the homeless, the hungry, Habitat for Humanity, and women's shelters. Since the fall of 1999, when he began working on the Vision Stories series, he has led seminars and retreats around the themes "A Safe Place to Tell Visions," "Vision Stories in the Bible and Today," and coming this spring: "Soul Growth: Discovering Lost Spiritual Dimensions." To schedule a seminar or a retreat, write to jsumwalt@naspa.net or phone 414-257-1228.
Joanne Perry-Sumwalt is director of Christian Education at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee. Jo is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, with a degree in English and writing. She has co-authored two books with John, Life Stories: A Study In Christian Decision Making and Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit: 62 Stories For Cycle B. Jo writes original curriculum for church classes. She also serves as the secretary of the Wisconsin chapter of the Christian Educators Fellowship (CEF), and is a member of the National CEF.
Jo and John have been married since 1975. They have two grown children, Kathryn and Orrin. They both love reading, movies, long walks with Chloe (their West Highland Terrier), and working on their old farmhouse in southwest Wisconsin.
**********************************************
StoryShare, February 20, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
