Last night concluded a three-night Revival Series at the Morris Chapel United Methodist Church in Walkertown, NC, a bucolic town on the outskirts of Winston-Salem.
I preached a two-night revival there in 2016 and was grateful for the return invitation and expanded schedule. My long-time friend and colleague Dan Lyons is the pastor at Morris Chapel and has been instrumental in these speaking opportunities.
I shared material from the sermons that formed the basis of the Crash Test Dummies book.
For the closing sermon and response, Dan secured white flags of surrender. My message — coming from the Samson cycle of stories in Judges 13-16 — had one of my favorite bottom lines: Surrender your impulses so you don’t surrender to them.
As we sang “I Surrender All” (#354 in your United Methodist hymnal!), we invited folks to come forward to the altar, pick up a flag, and take it home as their memento of surrender.
Dan was kind enough to snap this photo before our service started and sent it to me with the tongue-in-cheek caption, “Product Placement.”