Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: ruler, sovereign, monarch, supreme ruler, crowned head, majesty, Crown, head of state, royal personage, emperor, prince, potentate, overlord, liege lord, lord, leader, chief, star, leading light, luminary, superstar, mogul, giant, master, kingpin, celebrity, lion

Antonyms: queens, peasant, serf, slave, subject, servant, average joe, common man, rank and file, lower class, common person, workers, commoner, the masses, the poor, plebians, bourgeois, proletariat, laborer, working class, middle class, blue-collar, a nobody, subvassal

Showing 1 to 25 of 45 results

1. ...More...

Luke 16:19-31

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... social ladder to define American economics. The old ladder, Whitehead explains, was composed of a small group of rich at the top, a larger but dwindling group of poor at the bottom, and in between a mushrooming middle class comprised of both white collar and blue collar - acting like some enormous jet-puffed marshmallow cushion between the rich and the poor. This middle class held such familiar folk as white-collar Ward and June Cleaver of "Leave It To Beaver", Mike and Carol Brady of "The Brady Bunch," and ...

2. Every Day God Empowers

Matthew 3:13-17

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... . They were homeless people. His stepfather may have even been forced to hold up a sign for passersby to see: "Will work for food." Once they found out it was safe to return, he didn't grow up in splendor. His stepfather had a good job but he was a blue collar worker. Joe worked in one of the trades. He worked long hours and he was his own boss but it meant his adopted son couldn't go to the best schools. The family couldn't afford it. But then that was pretty normal for the times. Only a few of ...

3. Table Manners

John 2:12-25

Sermon

Craig MacCreary

... . On the other hand, the Corinthians seemed to have made a mess of things by letting the chaos of the secular order to break out in the shared life. Those who worked on flex time, the white-collar folks, came in and gobbled things up first before the blue-collar and the slave-collar folks showed up. It seems that folks get into trouble here because of what they think that they have to serve up. We get the mistaken notion that it is our recipe for success that matters whether people are fed or not. Often, if ...

4. The Perisitent Noise Of Solemn Assemblies

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... from Cicero, Illinois, on his way to the tavern. And seeing the beaten, wounded, black, middle-class Protestant deacon in the gutter, he stopped his car, administered first-aid, called the ambulance and the police, followed them to the hospital, where the blue-collar, Independent, Polish factory worker paid for the black, middle-class deacon's room and care in advance. Now, who was the neighbor and who was being neighborly? By this famous story, Jesus made an inclusive critique of the religion of his time ...

5. The Spirit of...Winter?

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... claim the throne of his ancestor David and will reign over the house of Jacob forever (verse 33). To Mary who's the least is promised the birth of the one who will be the greatest. God's giving knows no boundaries. God's love is limitless. The blue collar town of Nazareth and the blue-blood city of Bethlehem will join together in bringing God's miracle to earth. Jesus' great and grubby start in life was simply a foretaste of his entire mission to the world. It's no wonder that Luke's infancy narrative gives ...

6. Serving With Water: The Washing

John 13:1-17

Sermon

Steve Swanson

... 's coat? Clothing has an effect on us. These effects are often achieved because clothing can classify people according to occupation. People do what they wear. In the largest and broadest way, we divide occupations into two groups - the "white collar" and the "blue collar." Even the rather negative term "red-neck" must originally have had something to do with where one worked and what he wore. White collar workers don't get red necks under banks of eight-foot fluorescent tubes. They don't get farmers' tans ...

7. Beyond the Ordinary

Matthew 5:38-42

Sermon

Joe Pennel

... across barriers and jumps over boundaries. Blacks can love whites, and whites can love blacks. People under thirty can love those over thirty, and people over thirty can love those under thirty. Blue-collar workers can love those in management, and those in management can love blue-collar people. Activists can love conservatives, and conservatives can love activists. Those in establishment can love hippies, and hippies can love those in establishment. The militant can love the pacifist, and the pacifist ...

8. The Curse of the Cross

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... insults and invectives with remarkable insight and ingenuity. I dare any current stand-up comedian, rap musician, or action-movie hero to successfully spiel off a ten-word curse that never repeats the same word or same action twice, as the virtuoso blue-collars of my childhood did with so little effort. Curses used to have clout and coherence. The ancients didn't mess around with insulting anyone's parentage or prowess. They got right down to the business of condemning the next dozen or so generations ...

9. The Highest Bidder

Ephesians 3:14-21

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... that the way we experience the world, blind as we are, is normal. Affluent Americans are used to being separated from lower income families. They don't work with them, worship with them, or go out of their way to attend the same parties. Blue-collar workers are used to a life apart from white-collar management. A wage earner may drive through the neighborhood of his employer, but hardly expect to be invited in for a barbecue. Protestants are used to being separated from Catholics. Pentecostal church members ...

10. Four Cornerstones

Ephesians 2:11-22

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Both Elizabeth and I hail from paper-mill towns. A few years ago the blue collar-redneck-good-old-boy logging town Elizabeth grew up in (Springfield, Oregon) found itself very interested all of a sudden in building sushi bars and trendy, high-tech fitness centers. Why? Sony Corporation seriously considered the town as a new factory headquarters site. Like every other economically struggling small town, ...

11. Are You a GOT TO or a GET TO Christian?

Genesis 15:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... popularizing and profit-maximizing NASCAR. Under his leadership NASCAR was transformed from the sport of redneck roughnecks to the most watched sport in America. Everyone...from highbrow, high-profile, multimillionaire Hollywood types, to hardworking, face-in-the-crowd, blue-collar/pink-collar laborer types...came to love watching cars go fast and pass one another. And everyone, it seems, loved Dale Earnhardt. When an unremarkable track accident (hardly worth calling a crash in the spectacular smashup world ...

12. Everything Counts

Luke 16:1-15

Sermon

James Merritt

... the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.’” (Luke 16:3, ESV) The manager is honest. He is too lazy to dig and too proud to beg. He is a white-collar guy who refuses to go back to a blue-collar world. He asks the key question, “What shall I do?” In other words, “What am I going to do with what I have today to get ready for the tomorrow that I know is going to come?” That leads to the second lesson - II. We Are Responsible To the Master ...

13. Paradoxes Of The Christian Faith

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

Carlyle Fielding Stewart

... at the time of his birth. A king whose family was so indigent that when it came time for tribute at the Temple, his mother brought a turtle dove because she couldn't afford a more expensive sacrifice. He was a king from a low-income blue-collar family, born in the rundown ghetto of the backwashes of an obscure town called Bethlehem. Our scripture exemplifies this paradox - "He who finds shall lose and he who loses shall find it." The Christian faith is a strange and paradoxical faith. A paradox is something ...

14. So Much To Say, So Little Time

John 16:5-16

Sermon

Alexander H. Wales

... grown men, you'd think that they would have been more sophisticated, but we have to remember that these were commoners, men of passions, used to living lives of intensity on fishing boats, on farms, in workshops, and in tax offices. They were the blue-collar workers of their time, skilled and yet not educated, used to the basics, not interested in what the future might hold because they found life difficult enough in the present. In other words, the disciples were like you and me. Our educational levels ...

15. For All The People

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Mark Radecke

... Quirenius. Not to Herod or Annas or Caiaphas. Not, in other words, to the head honchos and grand high pooh-bahs of the political and religious establishments. The heavenly heralds of the Christ Child's birth seek out instead mere shepherds -- blue-collar guys who pulled the graveyard shift, doing an unglamorous job in the wee hours of the workaday world. There is no angelic debate over the shepherds' worthiness to be the recipients of so great an announcement. No differentiating between believing, doubting ...

16. For All The People

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Mark Radecke

17. What Is Your Mercy Quotient?

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... . Therefore, we seldom comprehend what we need to do to help them. Have you ever known persons who have been able to crawl out of themselves and into another’s situation? About two years ago, the president of Haverford College wrote a book entitled Blue Collar Journal, an account of his experiences during a six-month sabbatical. He writes that he was not sure how to spend those months. At first he thought he would write a book about his field, labor relations, but he had already done that several ...

18. Eager For The Journey

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

Brett Blair

... to take it all away. But even when we are content we find ourselves asking, “Is this all there is? Isn’t there more to life than this?” Peter, James, and John. They were no different then you and me. Their daily lives were as blue-collar as anyone’s. They lived paycheck-to-paycheck, day-to-day. The feeding of their families depended on a little bit of skill, dogged persistence, and a whole lot of luck. Every morning, when they arrived for work one question dominated their lives: Where are the ...

19. The Ultimate Question

Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon

David E. Leininger

... -dude. Jeremy Sisto's playful Jesus exhibits a zest that should make his sacrifice all the more poignant."(1) TIME magazine said the film "wants to find a middle ground between irreverence and irrelevance, promising a Savior who laughs and emotes like the blue-collar rabble rouser he was in the New Testament. It takes steps toward greater realism, putting the political ferment of Christ's time in the foreground [and it does an outstanding job of that], but ends up a traditional, staid epic that is double ...

20. What If The Lord Really Did Come Today?

Amos 5:18-27

Sermon

King Duncan

... or the Methodists or the Mormons or the Roman Catholics or the Jews? Would it be good news for white people or black people or native American people or Chinese people or Russian people? Would it be good news for the rich or for the poor, for blue collar workers or for the intellectual elite, for the law abiding or those in prison? If Christ should return today, who would be rejoicing? An obvious question, you say, but be careful. The answer may not be as obvious as you may think. The people of Israel in ...

21. No Salt in the City?

Mark 9:42-50

Sermon

Stephen M. Crotts

... drink." True. But you can add plenty of salt to his oats. And he'll find the water trough soon enough. When my Kathryn and I first married, we lived in a tiny three-room apartment in Atlanta. The complex had about 300 people in it, mostly blue collar workers -- divorcees, homosexuals, alcoholics, the unemployed. Looking back, it was a rough place, although it didn't seem like it at the time. There was always a domestic spat, a drug bust going down, or a break-in. The swimming pool was unfit to swim in. Beer ...

22. Kairos Commitments

Matthew 4:18-22, Matthew 4:12-17

Sermon

Susan R. Andrews

... most neatly coincided with my willingness to respond - was years ago when the Pastor Nominating Committee of this congregation first contacted me. It made no sense for this church to risk calling as pastor a young mother who was serving a 250-member, blue-collar congregation, with no experience in a sophisticated metropolitan community - to call me to serve a church as complex and convoluted as this congregation was back then. But then again it made no sense for me to uproot my family, drag my husband away ...

23. Out of the Box Gifts

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... Christmas ministry sponsored by Michael Slaughter and Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church (Tipp City, Ohio). The deal is this: for every dollar you spend on Christmas for yourself, you give a dollar for the church’s ministry in Darfur. In a few short years, in this blue-collar part of Ohio, this one church has raised 3 million dollars for Darfur. What child doesn’t like to play in boxes? In fact, lots of times the boxes are more fun than what came in them. But, as Paul reminded first-century disciples ...

24. A Stone’s Throw From: The Harvest

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... does in the movie New In Town. The movie stars Renee Zellweger who plays Lucy, a high-powered executive consultant in love with her upscale Miami lifestyle who is sent to a middle of nowhere town in Minnesota to oversee the restructuring of a blue collar manufacturing plant. After enduring a frosty reception from the locals, icy roads and freezing weather, she warms up to the small town's charm, and eventually finds herself being accepted by the community. When she's ordered to close down the plant and put ...

25. Altar Your Presence

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... . C. In the movie New In Town, starring Renee Zelleweger, she plays Lucy, a high-powered executive consultant in love with her upscale Miami lifestyle. Lucy who is sent to a middle of nowhere town in Minnesota to oversee the restructuring of a blue collar manufacturing plant. After enduring a frosty reception from the locals, icy roads and freezing weather, she warms up to the small town's charm, and eventually finds herself being accepted by the community. When she's ordered to close down the plant and ...

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