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Scott Hoezee

Scott Hoezee is an ordained pastor in the Christian Reformed Church and the author of several books including The Riddle of Grace (1996), Flourishing in the Land (1996), Remember Creation (1998), Speaking as One: A Look at the Ecumenical Creeds (1997), Speaking of Comfort: A Look at the Heidelberg Catechism (1998), and Proclaim the Wonder: Preaching Science on Sunday (2003). He is the Director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI.

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The Shattering Word

Scott Hoezee In my line of work, I think about preaching seven days a week, and for hours on end at that. After a while, someone like me can forget that even churchgoing folks don't ponder preaching nearly so often. And if that's true of regular attenders of public worship, one can only imagine how seldom thoughts about sermons cross the minds of those who rarely (if ever) show up for Sunday services. What's more, most preachers labor in relative…
April 1, 2008
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The Guest Pastor

We begin with strangers. Seminaries and church communions vary in terms of how they prepare young men and young women to become preachers, but in most cases seminarians begin by serving as guest preachers (or "pulpit supply" as it has rather inelegantly been put in my denominational tradition) in local congregations. In my case, I was licensed to preach following my first full year of academic study at seminary. Looking over my record book, I see that from the time…
February 1, 2008
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Returning

The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. Luke 2:20 In preaching classes I tell my students that a good first step in writing a new sermon is to read the Bible text aloud but at a deliberately--almost at a ridiculously-- slow pace. Somehow, forcing yourself to read exceedingly slowly helps details to pop out of the text that you've never noticed before on…
December 16, 2007
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How We See Things–Psalm 47

Scott Hoezee One of the most mind-boggling spectacles I've ever seen is a short science movie titled "Powers of Ten." Many of us no doubt saw this movie in a high school physics class. As the film opens, you see a close-up view of a young couple spreading out a picnic blanket on a grassy section of Chicago's Grant Park. Then, every ten seconds thereafter, the camera pulls back, each time increasing its distance from the couple by a power…
April 16, 2007
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One Man

FEBRUARY 2007: AS WE SEE IT by Scott Hoezee In a lecture delivered in the late 1980s, novelist Tom Wolfe noted that the surreal and outrageous nature of ever yday events in the modern world are often so unlikely, no novelist would get away with it if he/she concocted them in a stor yline. The writer's imagination, Wolfe said, can no longer compete with reality's bracing litany of odd coincidences. Just such a perplexing series of events rounded out the…
February 15, 2007
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Beyond Shouting: Religion and Science in Conversation

Scott Hoezee In the beginning, a few Renaissance geniuses used belief in God as the impetus to launch an investigation of the universe. Their development of science changed history. At the turn of the millennium on December 31, 1999, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis asserted that the single most important development of the last one thousand years was the rise of the scientific method through the experimental testing of hypotheses. Lewis may well have been right. Name almost any…
January 16, 2007
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Algebra

If there is one thing that most people agree on, it is that the loss of life is tragic. Matters get complicated when it comes to questions of capital punishment for perpetrators of heinous crimes or situations where people bent on violence suffer what some might deem to be their "just deserts" (as when the terrorist Zarquawi was killed last spring). In general, though, can't we assume that there is a broad consensus that the loss of "innocent life" is…
October 16, 2006
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Established

>"Establish the work of our hands for us--yes, establish the work of our hands." --Psalm 90:17b The heat waves this summer reminded me of a particularly dreadful spell of hot weather in the summer of 1995. In Chicago that year, scores of people died of the excessive heat, with most victims being the homeless as well as the elderly who lived in squalid apartments without adequate ventilation. An even more tragic dimension to this was revealed six weeks later when…
August 1, 2006
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Farewell, Fran

With this issue of Perspectives we bid a fond adieu to our longtime Poetry Editor, Fran Fike. The name of Francis G. Fike first appeared on the editorial masthead in the April 1995 edition, which means that Fran has worked on over 100 issues of Perspectives even as he has seamlessly transitioned through several different configurations of our board. As such, Fran has been a source of continuity across the years, helping new editors find their way and welcoming new…
January 16, 2006