#4: Seussapalooza

After 10 years of Forefront we’ve now done over 120 message series. Thought it might be fun and interesting to share with you my top twenty.

I grew up reading Dr. Seuss books, and when I had kids they had no choice but to become Seuss fans. I read them Seuss books over and over. My son literally knew “In a People’s House” by heart. My daughter could quote “Marvin K. Mooney” in her sleep.

Well, one time we had a guy in our church named Brian Minnes (who wanted to go into ministry) do the little “mini-sermon” at our baptism service. His text? “Green Eggs and Ham.” He talked about people who thought they wouldn’t want God, but it was because they had never “tasted and seen that the Lord is good.” And I was hooked. Before his message was over I had already planned out my first series on Dr. Seuss books.

A few months later we were ready to do it. I was going to call it something like, “The Dr. Seuss Series,” but the wife of one of our staff members (Amy Miller) said, “No dummy, call it Seussapalooza 2002za!” Bingo!

Now that I’ve done about 12 of his books, I actually think Dr. Seuss meant for them to become sermons. Most of them are already sermons; you really don’t need to do much to preach them!

We also have all kinds of fun creatively with this series – there are endless options for creatively communicating the idea of the book and we have a blast coming up with new one’s.

By the way, of all the Seuss books/sermons, probably my favorite is “Gerald McBoing Boing.” Just that name alone … gotta love it.

Also, a few years ago I was asked to preach at a revival kind of thing at a church and they gave me permission to preach about anything I wanted. I preached on Dr. Seuss. One night I preached on “Put Me In The Zoo” and I had a time of mass confessional where I had everyone repeat after me a series of sentences like, “I am a loser!” “I am a dufus.” “I am a dork!” After the service a lady informed me that “A dork is a mule’s penis.” I still think my greatest preaching moment might be that I had a group of strangers declare, “I am a mule’s penis!” Classic!

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