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Popular website updated
Originally intended as a resource for small congregations without full-time clergy, "Sermons that Work"'s readership now extends far beyond that, and the series is among the most-accessed pages within the Episcopal Church website.
"This is such a wonderful resource for the Episcopal Church -- and wider online audience," said Bowie Snodgrass, former web content editor for the Episcopal Church Center in New York. She was responsible for the redesign, assisted by Art Director Wade Hampton and Web Producer Barry Merer of the Episcopal Church Center's digital communication team.
Part of the series' popularity may be that the sermons are offered to the public domain without any copyright considerations.
The main page of the site asks readers to credit the authors of the sermons when they are read or referenced, but all are welcome to use the sermons as needed.
Although the layout and graphics have been redesigned to be more attractive and user-friendly, the site's content will include all the current features, particularly the heavily accessed archive of previous years' sermons. The online archive, which goes back to 1995, is only a partial record, however; the series has existed since 1989.
Wide appeal
It began as "Selected Sermons", which ultimately came under the editorial guidance of John Ratti. The series eventually was integrated into the "Worship That Works" material that was sent to small and rural churches in the 1990s to assist congregations with their Sunday services when they were without clergy. When the sermon series became available online, it was called "Worship That Works."
"When I took over the responsibility for "Sermons That Work" at the church center in 1999, I had no idea how valuable a tool it would be for lay folk, clergy and people looking for spiritual nurture," recalled the Rev. Ben Helmer, who served as the small-church missioner at the Episcopal Church Center from 1999 to 2006. "People from throughout the Anglican world, and our sister and brother churches, read these sermons and use the webpage as a source for ideas."
Under Helmer's guidance, the series changed its name to "Sermons That Work" and shifted from the Book of Common Prayer's lectionary to the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) in 2004-2005. The change was gradual at first, with approximately a third the sermons switching to the RCL readings the first year and half the second.
The 75th General Convention, meeting in June 2006, made the RCL the lectionary of the Episcopal Church, effective the first Sunday of Advent 2007.
Resolution A077 included the provision for continued use of the previous lectionary "for purposes of orderly transition," with the permission of the ecclesiastical authority in each diocese, until the First Sunday of Advent 2010.
The series has featured many different writers from all parts of the United States and from all over the world. Each year the series invites new writers to contribute fresh voices, but many of the current sermon writers are longstanding favorites who have participated since the inception of the series.
Katerina Whitely is one such writer, contributing sermons since the beginning.
"I love writing the sermons," Whitely said. "It gives me an excuse for delving deeply into Scriptures. I especially delight in finding the connecting threads in the three lessons: the Old Testament, the epistle and the Gospel. When that happens, the sermon seems to write itself. I love seeing the story as it unfolds in my mind's eye and making it visible to those who listen to the story.
"The difficulty of writing these sermons is that one is writing them for others to read, so the writer cannot use the firstperson pronoun. Once I mastered that craft -- of telling the story vividly but without personal references -- it became a great intellectual pleasure and a spiritual exercise of great value to me. And the greatest delight is to hear from far-flung places, from those who found some particular meaning in the sermon; thus I treasure notes from Australia, England, Canada and many of the U.S. dioceses."
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