wfn.org | Presiding Bishop delivers sermon series on national radio

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2001-121

Presiding Bishop delivers sermon series on national radio

     The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop and primate of the 
Episcopal Church, will be the featured speaker three times this summer on "The 
Protestant Hour," a nationally broadcast radio program that is now also 
accessible via streaming audio on the Internet. 

     Griswold preaches for the July 22, August 19 and September 16 installments 
of "The Protestant Hour" on most participating radio stations. Each program 
features a five-minute interview with Griswold.

     Nearly half way through a nine-year term as presiding bishop, Griswold 
serves as chief pastor of the Episcopal Church and primate of one of the Anglican 
Communion's 38 provinces. Before his election, he was bishop of the Episcopal 
Diocese of Chicago and a parish priest in Pennsylvania.		He is a graduate 
of Harvard and the General Theological Seminary and holds two degrees in theology 
from Oxford University in England.

     All three sermons are taken from the gospel of Luke, which tells us, 
Griswold says, that "Jesus' ministry is a ministry of good news, compassion and 
healing, but it is also provocative: It's a call to repentance, a change of 
heart, a change of direction. It's a call to wake up, be aware, make new 
choices."

     Religion, Griswold says, "often is a means of protection against the deeper 
demands of God, which involve losing one's self in order to find one's self, 
dying to the old self in order to be made new. It's a transformation of 
consciousness."

     Griswold discusses several parables during his sermon series and says the 
parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin "reveal God as a God who does not 
remain distant and remote but actively seeks us out and searches for us. Jesus is 
the embodiment of God's yearning and desire to draw us to God's own self."

     "The Protestant Hour" has been broadcast every week for nearly 56 years, 
winning numerous awards in the process, including the George Foster Peabody Award 
for broadcast excellence. It is produced cooperatively by the Episcopal Media 
Center, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 
and the United Methodist Church.