My First Sermon, and welcome to it, January 28, 2026. My sentiments concerning my first sermon

are comparable to the sentiments that the late Patrick McManus had toward his first year,

so please allow me to relate to you how it all happened. I joined the Navy while still in high school on a delayed entry program.

So right after I graduated from high school back east, in the summer of 1991, I came with my folks on their move out to Idaho.

I was not due to report to boot camp until November, and so with nothing better to do, I accompanied my parents here.

I had about four months of free time before heading off to San Diego. This was during the same time period when my father started an offbeat ministry called God's Garage, which I will tell you about sometime. Shoot, why not now? I should tell you about that now. Won't take but a minute. We had rented a house in Moscow just off the grounds of Moscow High School on the west side.

It was a big slope down to our backyard and clusters of students would come down there to step off

school property in order to smoke. The place was called, perhaps affectionately, doper's ditch.

At any rate, one morning my father looked out back and saw that a police officer was dispersing

the kids, encouraging them all to put an egg in their

shoe and beat it. Ever mindful of evangelistic opportunities, my father ran out back and asked the officer

if it would be all right if the kids smoked in his garage. The officer was game, as in,

it's your garage. So the policeman heard of the kids into the garage, and with all of them

thinking that Mr. Wilson was the coolest person ever. My dad then got a pop machine put in, a wood stove, and a bunch of used telephone wire spools to sit on. My brother Evan painted a bunch of Jesus people stuff on the walls, and I ran our rap session ministry there until I went to the Navy. Now, when we first arrived here in Moscow, the happening place, spiritually speaking, was, believe it or not, Emmanuel Lutheran. Pastor Larson was a gracious and godly leader, and I'm confident he had a lot to do with a mojo that was happening there. And because it was the happening place and because the cresting Jesus movement was just starting to lap the shores of Idaho, the church naturally had a youth group choir sort of thing

with the very 70s name, Salt Unlimited. Work with me here, I just used the phrase rap session earlier, if you remember, leave me alone. If I recall correctly, there would have been about 20 kids in the group. As I had some time to burn, and I played the guitar, I joined up with them during those free months. The director of the group was a young

firecracker of a Lutheran lady named Marva Gershmiel, and she kept us all in line and on pitch. We did versions of various songs that were floating about at that time. I remember a song day by day, which I think was from Godspell. One Sunday, we all headed out to a rural Lutheran church in the area in order to provide some special music for them.

As I was really new to the Poulouse area, I didn't have the grid of any map settled in my head yet, and so I unfortunately do not remember what small town it was. I don't even know if it was north, south, east, or west, but it was a small town and a small church out in the sticks. When we arrived there, such was the nature of the times, when every man was doing what was right in his own eyes, Marva learned from the natives that we were expected to take over the entire service. We thought we were going to do a song or two, and it turned out that we were responsible for the whole shebang. Okay, these things happened, and the 70s were sort of a liturgical Wild West,

but then Marva came over to me and said, you've got the sermon. It's all fun and games until...

Now, this was problematic and on numerous levels. As levels go, this was a nine-layer bean dip.

I was just out of high school, and had just turned 18. I was commissioned for this task by a woman who was not even a

theologian. She determined my qualifications for preaching the sermon, I am guessing, from the fact that I

talked at Bible studies probably too much. But that is only a guess. Whatever the reason, however,

...