Connecting with Hearers

In March of 2024, aviation manufacturer Boeing announced changes to their internal processes after failing a safety audit by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The audit followed a string of negative stories involving the safety of its aircrafts, including an incident in January where an Alaska Airlines flight experienced explosive decompression when an insufficiently secured door plug popped out.

The FAA reviewed 89 aspects of production at a plant in Renton, Washington, and found that the company failed at 33 of them. That amounts to a 63% success rate, which in school would normally earn students a letter grade of D.

In a memo to employees, president of Boeing’s commercial division Stan Deal said that the vast majority of failures involved employees not following approved procedures, and promised to provide opportunities for remedial learning. “We’ll be working with each employee noted with a non-compliance during the audit to ensure they fully understand the work instructions and procedures.”

Deal also acknowledged that the problems did not solely rest on the backs of production-level employees, but that many of Boeing’s procedures were confusing and changed too frequently. He said, “Our teams are working to simplify and streamline our processes and address the panel’s recommendations.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Whether in secular work or in ministry, taking hazardous shortcuts in a responsible work position, because of laziness, inexperience, or time pressure, can lead to disastrous results. It is better to speak up and take responsibility to make sure that a trust is fulfilled (1 Cor. 4:2).

NFL lineman Jim Marshall was part of the revered “Purple People Eater” Minnesota Viking defensive line. For twenty seasons he never missed a game, earning a reputation for toughness and reliability. On October 25, 1964, playing against the San Francisco 49ers, Marshall recovered a fumble in the fourth quarter and ran untouched for sixty-six yards to the end zone.

After crossing the goal line, he tossed the ball away and began celebrating. Imagine his surprise when an opposing player trotted up, patted him on the back, and thanked him. Marshall suddenly realized that he was standing in the wrong end zone. He had just scored a safety, giving two points to the 49ers. The Vikings still won that day, thanks to eight total turnovers from the 49ers.

On the return flight to Minnesota, teammates ribbed Marshall, who said he simply got confused. “They kept telling me to get up in the cockpit and fly the plane. That way we'd end up in Hawaii instead of Minnesota.”

In football, as in much of life, it doesn’t matter that you’re doing something earnestly if you aren’t doing the right thing.

When a local man was carjacked at a Sunoco gas station recently, he probably had no idea the perpetrators would be caught and his car recovered so quickly.

The man had just finished pumping his gas and was entering his car when the two teens approached and demanded his keys. After the man yielded, the two teenagers were baffled by the car’s manual transmission. Unable to put the car in gear, they instead exited the vehicle and ran.

The two teenagers were arrested for the attempted car theft after police chased them on foot. They were charged with carjacking and conspiracy to carjack.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those who disregard God’s standards for honesty and truth and try to lie, cheat, or steal their way to riches, will ultimately end in judgment, whether immediately or ultimately.

Passengers on an Emirates flight bound for Auckland, New Zealand that left Dubai one Friday morning ended up landing back at the same airport where it took off a little more than 13 hours later.

Flight EK448 departed at 10:30 a.m. local time but the pilot turned around nearly halfway into the almost 9,000-mile journey, landing back in Dubai just after midnight Saturday, according to FlightAware.

Auckland Airport was forced to close due to severe flooding. The airport statement said, "Auckland Airport has been assessing the damage to our international terminal and unfortunately determined that no international flights can operate today. We know this is extremely frustrating but the safety of passengers is our top priority."

Emirates said in a statement, "We regret the inconvenience caused to customers. Emirates will continue to monitor the situation in Auckland and issue updates where required."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Have you ever started on a long trip only to experience one complication after another only to find yourself right back where you started? In that case, you might begin to understand the frustration of the Israelites, who through disobedience, had to turn away in sight of the Promised Land and spend 40 years going around in circles in the desert before they returned to where they had started on the border of the Promised Land.

Writer Abigail Shrier goes in depth into the serious harm being caused to American pre-teen and teenage girls in her book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. Numerous interviews of girls who desire to transition reveal some of the causes are not just uncertainty with their gender, which is experienced by many and soon outgrown.

The other primary causes she lists are:

• Low self-esteem because of impossible beauty standards.
• Depression and anxiety.
• The postings of cool social media influencers who advocates passionately for kids to choose to transgender at any sign of ambivalence.
• General media pro-transgender advocacy.

Surprisingly, a large part of the problem is excessively coddling parents who give their young daughters no reason or opportunity to rebel. She wonders:

Whether this transgender craze isn't partially the result of over-parented, coddled kids desperate to stake out territory for rebellion. Whether it is no coincidence that so many of these kids come from upper middle-class white families, seeking cover in a minority identity? Or is it the fact that they overwhelmingly come from progressive families - raised with few walls, they hunt for barriers to knock down.

The teen years are naturally tumultuous. Teens get emotional as they learn and mature. Parents are supposed to set limits. If you have a fight with your teenager, she might be angry with you, but she'll feel the presence of a guardrail. Sometimes, just knowing it's there may be enough. Your teenager may tell you she hates you; she may even believe it. But on a deeper level, some of her need for individuation and rebellion may be satisfied. If you eliminate all conflict through endless agreement and support, it may only encourage her to kick things up a notch.

Marilyn Oettinger can't stop thinking about it--and neither can her family. "There she was," says her daughter Margie, "confused, flabbergasted, embarrassed. And this guy rescued her."

She's talking about when her 89-year-old mom went on a grocery run with some other seniors to the Star Market in Auburndale--a rare unassisted trip since losing her husband in July. Things went fine until the checkout line, when Marilyn discovered her only credit card had been canceled two days earlier--because the account was in her late husband's name. "And this amazing person behind her said 'Don't worry. I'll take care of your groceries,'" Margie said.

The bill certainly wasn't meager--it was $109. Marilyn accepted his offer--believing she'd get the guy's contact info and pay him back later. Margie said, “She tried to get his name, but he said 'No. Just say a prayer for me.'" And then--with his good deed done--the fella vanished.

"That gives me the chills," said a woman wheeling a cart from the store. "That's an amazing story. Really cool." A man leaving the store agreed. "You know it makes me happy when someone who doesn't really want the credit gets it. They deserve it, right?"

Indeed, Marilyn’s family is pledging to pay it forward with similar kindness on future trips to the supermarket. But they also reached out on social media, trying to at least get the chance to say a proper "thank you." Margie says, "We're trying to find him. And even if he doesn't want to come forward, we're hoping that he'll know that we're incredibly grateful."

They've already said the prayer--several times. Margie said, “It's amazing to have an angel like that.”

In a review of A.J. Swoboda’s book Dusty Roads, Leslie Fields writes:

We all have stories of getting lost. Here is one of mine: I crossed the Sahara one year on an expedition truck with 20 others, meandering from Cairo into the heart of Africa. We got lost often, once for three days, wandering farther and farther into the African bush with insufficient water, no GPS, and no people to point the way out. We were tense: we had to get off the dirt roads before the monsoon rains began. For most of those months, we were covered in dust, breathing through bandanas, praying we’d find the right path.

That’s one kind of “lost narrative.” Here’s another: As I write, I am on the brink of major life changes—some prayed for, a few drastic and unwelcome. I find myself stumbling, fearful, uncertain of these new snaking roads and unsure of God’s place in it all. Then I feel guilty. Where is my faith? Why am I not “counting it all joy” and skipping confidently into the sunny future?

A. J. Swoboda’s book, The Dusty Ones: Why Wandering Deepens Your Faith, came to my door at the right time. It is, of course, about the second kind of trek: our pilgrimage toward the city of God, with its painful desert crossings and wanderings.

We all want a life marked by straight paths, smooth roads, and victorious arrivals. But as Swoboda argues, wandering is “an inescapable theme of the Christian experience,” even if the church has often minimized its inevitable role in every pilgrim’s progress.

Returning to my own story, our expedition truck arrived in Mombasa five months later, nearly on schedule. We beat the monsoon rains, but the trip was not just about getting there. Every village, waterhole, and sandpit along the way had purpose and value. So it is with our lives. Swoboda reminds us that “Christian spirituality is a slow train that must inevitably stop at every little Podunk town in our life—nothing can be skipped over.”

The opening lines of a recent article in INews reads: “Those of us without traditional religion are left to make our peace with uncertainty. ... There’s nothing comforting about being agnostic.” In the article, Eleanor Margolis laments her agnosticism and muses about the benefits of faith.

It was in February, and while Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, that I started to wonder if it was time to find God. Definite God, that is. Not the half-hearted agnostic one built on a Jenga tower of uncertainty. The addition of a heightened nuclear threat from Putin made me desperate for a vengeful Old Testament God. Someone (to) smite the warmongers and oligarchs, the evil ones “know not what they do.” When nothing is left of civilization but the cockroaches.

The last time I felt so envious of religious people was when my mum was dying of cancer. Certainty about an afterlife sure would’ve come in handy then. And prayer might have created the illusion that I had some power over the situation. Instead, I was treated to the spiritual equivalent of the shrug emoji. I became a devout follower of one true religion of the 21st century: uncertainty. Those of us without traditional religion are left to make our peace with uncertainty.

On the unusually cold morning of January 28, 1986, the Challenger space shuttle blew apart 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board. But according to some conspiracy theorists, six of the seven crew members still live among us.

Some of the examples are:

Captain Richard “Dick” Scobee, is now the CEO of a Chicago marketing-advertising company called Cows in Trees.

Pilot Michael J. Smith is professor Michael J. Smith of the University of Wisconsin.

Mission Specialist Judith Resnik is a professor of Law at Yale Law School.

Payload Specialist (and “Teacher in Space”) Christa McAuliffe now only uses her first name, Sharon. She has an almost entirely different face than that of Christa’s, and is an adjunct professor at Syracuse University College of Law.

Payload Specialist Gregory Jarvis is the only person that the conspiracy theorists believe died, because they couldn’t identify a double for him.

The facts have repeatedly shown that Challenger tragically fell from the sky due to an O-ring failure after the ship was launched in unsafe temperatures.

In a recent article in Popular Mechanics, Professor Marta Marchlewska at the Polish Institute of Psychology explained the cause for such conspiracies. “People who say that astronauts are still alive refuse to accept that bad things accidentally happen to good people. So, there's someone behind the disaster or it simply did not happen.”

The author of the article then summarizes: “A conspiracy theory tames the great chaos around us, which is the likely explanation for these implausible ideas. It’s easier to blame the imagined secret machinations of influential people, serving dark agendas, than admitting life can be a cruel beast."

Possible Preaching Angle:

People are tempted to believe a lie when the truth challenges our false beliefs. People want to believe that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people. People want to believe they we are able to be good. But none of that is true. But, as followers of Christ, we have something far more trustworthy to tame the great chaos around us.

As the Russian invasion into Ukraine drags onward, international approval ratings of Russian president Vladimir Putin have been, pardon the term, tanking. But for a certain subset of Canadians, the anti-Putin sentiment adds unacceptable insult to Ukrainian injury. And like other more serious international incidents, people are somehow blaming the French.

That’s because the French spelling of the Russian president’s name is “Poutine,” which is also the name of a French-Canadian diner staple: fried potatoes topped with gravy and cheese curds. This is why French restaurant Maison de la Poutine was subject to rude, harassing, and insulting phone calls throughout February and March. This is because people read the name of its signature dish – often called the national dish of Canada – and misinterpreted it as support for the Russian leader.

On its Twitter account, the restaurant was forced to issue a clarification, which included the following affirmation:

Poutine was created by passionate cooks who wanted to bring joy and comfort to their customers. La Maison de la Poutine has worked since its first day to carry on these values. Today it brings its most sincere support to the Ukrainian people who are courageously fighting for their freedom against the tyrannical Russian regime.

Another popular French-Canadian restaurant Le Roy Jucep, went even further, renaming the popular dish as “la frite fromage” (literally “the cheese potato”), so as to dissuade any presumed affiliation with Putin.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Names are important because they bestow honor. When someone behaves dishonorably, we besmirch the names we are given and others see those names as disgraceful.

On-air announcer Glenn Consor was doing what he’s paid to do at an NBA game: giving off-the-cuff commentary to the events as they unfolded. But this moment would end up being a notorious chapter in his broadcasting career.

Consor is the color analyst for NBC Sports Washington which covers the Washington Wizards. As such, he had a perfect view of Houston Rockets guard Kevin Porter, Jr. as he launched a game-winning three-pointer to defeat the Wizards on their home floor. In the shock of the moment, Consor said the following: “You’ve got to give credit. Kevin Porter Jr., like his dad, pulled that trigger right at the right time.”

Consor made the paternal reference because he assumed the Rockets guard was the son of former Washington Bullets standout Kevin Porter. But he was wrong. The father of the Rockets’ Kevin Porter Jr. did not previously play in the NBA.

However, back in 1993 Porter’s father did plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of a fourteen-year-old, a conviction for which he spent four-and-a-half years in prison. So many fans were offended at the comment, because it appeared as though Consor was glibly making a double entendre of Porter Jr. and his father’s criminal background.

But Consor meant no such harm. He had no idea that his use of the phrase “pulling the trigger” would be interpreted literally and was mortified when he found out about his mistake. The next day he offered the following apology:

Please allow me to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize to Kevin Porter Jr., his family and the Rockets organization for the comments I made during last night’s game. I mistakenly thought that Kevin was the son of former Washington player Kevin Porter and was unaware that the words I chose to describe his game-winning shot would be in any way hurtful or insensitive. I have reached out Kevin to personally apologize and hope to be able to talk with him soon.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As Christians we are called to own up to our mistakes and ask forgiveness when our words hurt others, even when we mean no harm.

49-year-old German brewery worker Erwin Kreuz blew his life savings on a once-in-a-lifetime birthday trip to San Francisco. He’d seen it on TV, and he wanted to visit the Wild West. As the flight from Frankfurt stopped to refuel in Bangor, Maine, before continuing on to California, an air stewardess who had finished her shift told Kreuz to “have a nice time in San Francisco.” Her choice of words would change Kreuz’s life.

Kreuz, who typically enjoyed drinking 17 beers a day, was a little groggy, and on hearing this, got off the plane, jumped in a cab and asked the driver to take him to the city. The cab dropped Kreuz at a hotel in downtown Bangor and he found a tavern to quench his almighty thirst. He wandered Bangor for three days enjoying the sights and sounds that Maine had to offer. Unfortunately, Kreuz still thought he was in San Francisco.

Kreuz was certain he was in San Francisco, and he didn’t stop believing that for three very strange days. At one point Kreuz was reassured by the sight of two Chinese restaurants in the town, something he knew was in San Francisco from the movies. After much wandering, Kreuz decided he must be in a Bay Area suburb, so he hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take him to downtown San Francisco. The driver sped away as though Kreuz was crazy.

Kreuz returned to the tavern and tried to get some help from a waitress. The language barrier was too great, so she put him in contact with Gertrude Romine who spoke German. Romine and her family took Kreuz into their home, and word spread of the lost tourist, first to the Bangor Daily News, then nationally, then the world.

Hearing of his story, The San Francisco Examiner paid for Kreuz to fly out to his initial destination. When there, he was treated like a visiting dignitary. Kreuz was welcomed by the mayor, who presented him with a proclamation declaring that San Francisco does, in fact, exist.

Kreuz was soon due back at work at the brewery and, after four days in San Francisco, boarded a flight back home holding a “Please let me off in Frankfurt” sign.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Confusion; Eternity; Heaven; Lostness – This humorous story also has a sobering application for all who go through life assuming that at the end of life’s journey they will find themselves in heaven, only to discover that they are greatly mistaken. “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Prov. 14:12; 16:25).

Author Meghan O'Gieblyn, explores meaning, morality, and faith. She recalls the role of thinking and reason during her days at Bible College:

When I was a Christian, I had a naive, unquestioning faith in the faculty of higher thought, in my ability to comprehend objective truths about the world. ... People often decry the thoughtlessness of religion, but when I think back on my time in Bible school, it occurs to me that there exist few communities where thought is taken so seriously. We spent hours arguing with each other—in the dining hall, in the campus plaza—over the finer points of predestination or the legitimacy of covenant theology.

Beliefs were real things that had life-or-death consequences. A person’s eternal fate depended on a willingness to accept or reject the truth—and we believed implicitly that logic was the means of determining those truths. Even when I began to harbor doubts…. I maintained an essential trust in the notion that reason would reveal to me the truth.

Today, no longer a believer, she has her doubts:

I no longer believe in God. I have not for some time. I now live with the rest of modernity in a world that is “disenchanted.” ... I live in a university town, a place that is populated by people who consider themselves called to a “life of the mind.” Yet my friends and I rarely talk about ideas or try to persuade one another of anything. It’s understood that people come to their convictions by elusive forces: some combination of hormones, evolutionary biases, and unconscious needs. Twice a week I attend a yoga class where I am instructed to “let go of the thinking mind.”

A "slip of the tongue" by an air traffic controller at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport saw two planes come within 300 feet of crashing into each other in July, 2020.

A United Airlines flight from Newark, NJ was making its approach to land at the same time that an EasyJet was preparing to take off for Malaga, Spain. The Newark flight was supposed to be assigned to land on runway 09L, as the Malaga flight was cleared to take off from runway 09R.

Due to an unfortunate slip of the tongue, however, the controller gave clearance for Newark to land on 09R, instead of 09L. Furthermore, the controller didn’t have direct line-of-sight access to runway 09R because of an equipment malfunction.

Eventually, the Malaga flight asked why the Newark plane was given clearance to land on their runway, and warned of the imminent collision. The Newark plane was instructed to abort the landing and ascend, but by the time it engaged the evasive maneuver, the two planes were only 300 feet apart.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even in situations that seem routine, our words still have tremendous power to heal or hurt, build or destroy. Being careless with the tongue is akin to flirting with calamity.

Keira Bell was fourteen when she first began identifying as a boy. Two years later, she was prescribed puberty blockers and testosterone. At twenty, she underwent a double-mastectomy to remove both breasts. Now, at 23, she identifies again with her biological sex and recently won a lawsuit against the doctors who allowed her to go down this path at such a young age.

At the time, Keira believed that these treatments would help her “achieve happiness.” She said, “I was stuck in severe depression and anxiety. I felt extremely out of place in the world. I was really struggling with puberty and my sexuality and I had no one to talk these things through with.”

When she sought medical help, she was given the impression that the doctors and therapists would be neutral, but that wasn’t the case. “Once I arrived [at the gender identity clinic], I was not challenged in any sense and I was affirmed [as a boy] from the beginning.”

“When I was questioning my identity there was nowhere to find support that didn’t affirm the delusion of being in the ‘wrong body.’ No organizations existed that might be able to tell me that it was okay to be a girl who didn’t like stereotypically ‘girly’ things, and that I was no less female because I am same-sex attracted.”

Keira began questioning the ideology behind her transition when she found herself upset about the case of Rachel Dolezal, a white college professor who identified as black.

“I couldn’t come up with a reason why being transgender was ‘more valid’ than transracial. It was the start of a slow wake-up call. … I had finished my physical transition and my health was beginning to decline. It was at that point I realized I didn’t want to live a lie and that it was really important to be myself.”

Keira looks back on her transition with sadness. Her treatments have left her with permanent facial hair and a lower voice. “There was nothing wrong with my body, I was just lost and without proper support. I should have been challenged on the proposals or the claims that I was making for myself. And I think that would have made a big difference as well. If I was just challenged on the things I was saying."

In December 2020, a British court ruled in Keira Bell’s favor that teenagers under 16 are unable to give informed consent about puberty-blockers, and that it may be necessary even for older teenagers to require the court’s decision in prescribing these treatments.

Science writer Michael Bond is a bit of an expert in the traumatic subject of lostness. He writes that being lost is a fear that runs deep in our psyche and culture:

Children lost in the woods is a common a motif in modern fairy tales and in ancient mythology. Usually in fiction there is some kind of redemption: Snow White is rescued by dwarfs and even Hansel and Gretel, facing certain doom in the gingerbread house, find their way home. Reality is often more grim: During the 18th and 19th centuries, getting lost was one of the most common causes of death among the children of European settlers in the North American wilderness.

Science researcher Dr. Jan Souman used GPS monitors to track numerous volunteers as they tried to walk in a straight line without tech through Germany’s Bienwald forest and the Sahara Desert. When clouds obstructed the sun errors quickly accumulated, small deviations became large ones, and they ended up walking in circles. With no external cues to help them, people will not travel more than around 100 meters from their starting position, regardless of how long they walk for. This says a lot about our spatial system and what it requires to anchor us to our surroundings.

In the absence of landmarks and boundaries, our head-direction cells can’t compute direction and distance, and leave us flailing in space. Above all pay careful attention … when you go into the woods.

In his book, Heath Adamson describes the process of correctly diagnosing a problem:

Horst Schulze, the former COO of Ritz-Carlton Hotels, told the story of one manager's discovery of a problem that seemed to confuse almost everyone. Numerous complaints came in to management because room service was repeatedly delayed. The eggs were cold, the toast was hard, and guests were inconvenienced. Mr. Schulze described a typical response as being something along the lines of scolding the supervisor for being incompetent. As one could expect, the discouraged supervisor would then gather their staff around and do the same to them. Blame would cascade down from one person to the next. But this isn't what happened at the Ritz-Carlton.

The Ritz-Carlton manager assembled the team, and they studied the problem. The kitchen staff prepared the food on time. The staff quickly took the trays to the elevator for delivery. They discovered that the issue had nothing to do with the kitchen staff but rather the service elevators were not always available. This delayed delivery. Then, they continued to study the situation by using a stopwatch to time the elevators for an entire morning.

The reason the food was delayed and arriving to the rooms cold had nothing to do with irresponsible kitchen staff or faulty elevators. A decision by management to reduce the number of bedsheets on each floor was causing the housekeepers to use the elevators more frequently, thus tying them up more. Trying to save money by reducing the number of bedsheets purchased, stored, and washed actually created more challenges in the long run and resulted in angry customers and poor room service. Misdiagnosing a problem never results in solving it.

As a piece entitled “Google Maps Hacks,” German performance artist Simon Weckert borrowed 99 smartphones and pulled them, in a child’s wagon, down an otherwise empty roadway. In doing so, he was able to fool the Google Maps application, which shaded the roadway a deep red to indicate an instance of actual gridlock.

He said the stunt was designed to illustrate the pervasive effects of technology. “People are trying to think about … what does it mean to use those services in everyday life? And how they shape our everyday life and how, more generally, they shape our everyday society.”

Google spokesperson Ivy Hunt issued a cheerful response. “We’ve launched the ability to distinguish between cars and motorcycles in several countries … though we haven’t quite cracked traveling by wagon. We appreciate seeing creative uses of Google Maps like this as it helps us make maps work better over time.”

On his website, Weckert said that apps like Google Maps have “fundamentally changed our understanding of what a map is, how we interact with maps, their technological limitations and how they look aesthetically … (they) make virtual changes to the real city.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God allows us to use technology, but we must be vigilant to trust God more than our devices; otherwise, we run the risk of being seduced by their promises and deceived by their limitations.

The picture William Damon paints with his groundbreaking book The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life provides a wake-up call. His research shows that almost 25 percent of US youth ages 12 to 22 are “rudderless.” They have little to no direction in life and are at serious risk of never fulfilling their potential. Another 25 percent have purposeful goals but have taken few if any steps toward those goals. Approximately 31 percent have actively tried several purposeful pursuits without knowing why they are doing so or whether they’ll continue with these interests in the future. Only 20 percent have a clear vision of what they want to accomplish in life and why and have realistic plans.