Dan R. Crawford's Page

A lot has been written on social media recently about sermon plagiarizing – preaching someone else’s sermon, although one of my preaching professors told us if you preach another’s sermon it is called plagiarizing, but if you combine parts of several sermons, it is called research. My pastor-father used to say, “When better sermons are written, I’ll preach them.” Sometimes they were and sometimes he did. A friend began his Chapel sermon at Southwestern Seminary by saying, “If you like this…

Yesterday was Father’s Day. In spite of having had skin cancer surgery on my forehead on the preceding Monday and having spent the week with swollen eyes and nose, using ice packs for ten minutes every hour, taking pain killers on a regular basis, and sleeping with my head elevated, I preached my morning sermon. It was not that the congregation especially needed my sermon, but it was that I needed to preach on Father’s Day. When I was fifteen years old, I was involved in a Saturday night…

Every time I passed by, he was there – in the cul-de-sac, near his house, seated in his walker/chair, across from the school, with his American flag flying, a smaller flag in his hand, waving. I often thought of stopping to visit with him, but it was COVID season and social distancing was being advised. So, I slowed down, lowed my window and saluted him and his flags. He always responded with a wave. One day, as I passed by, there was a fire truck and an ambulance in the cul-de-sac. I…

The difference between envision and vision is that envision sees or imagines something within the mind, and vision sees something as if it was true. When I was young we had no TV, so I listened to The Lone Ranger and baseball’s Game of the Day on the radio. While I could not see the action, I could envision the scenes and events in my mind. In the long run, I think it helped me be a person of vision. Once you start seeing something in your mind, you start seeing how it can happen, then you…