While Grapevine's Ed Young gets some interesting (in a good way) publicity for his latest sermons, I get a reminder of why it is that I prefer Greg Boyd's sermons a bit more. Here's the title of his latest: "Revolting Against Normal"

I suppose it's just a matter of taste and/or style.

One sidenote from Ed Young's sermons ...

Mr. Young, known simply as Ed to his parishioners, and his wife, both 47, have been married for 26 years and have four children, including twins. They have firsthand experience with some of the barriers to an intimate sex life in marriage, including careers, exhaustion, outside commitments, and "kids," a word that Mr. Young told church members stands for "keeping intimacy at a distance successfully."

But if you make the time to have sex, it will bring you closer to your spouse and to God, he has said. You will perform better at work, leave a loving legacy for your children to follow and may even prevent an extramarital affair.

"If you've said, 'I do,' do it," he said. As for single people, "I don't know, try eating chocolate cake," he said.

I'm not sure that helps me much in the way his advice to married couples is supposed to help them, but it does give me a few late afternoon snacking ideas. Being single in church isn't the toughest thing in the world, so I won't register this as a complaint. But there's a sense of celebration about marriage and children that does at least put some of us on the proverbial sidelines. Even if only for a sermon or two.

It's impossible to be everything to everyone all at the same time. And there is a great deal of worth in celebrating marriage and birth ... even if they're those of others. But it's just as good - I suggest - to know that revolting against normal also has it's place.