The Gospel According to Bill King

Sermons by Rev. Bill King | Reviewed by Eric Wendorff

In September 2019, Covenant Presbyterian Church celebrated its 65th anniversary. During 20 of those 65 years, from 1978 until his retirement in 1998, the Reverend William Torrie (Bill) King served as Covenant’s senior pastor. For another 19 years until his death in 2017 Bill served as pastor emeritus. As Bill was Covenant’s longest serving pastor, his preaching was central to Covenant’s life and history. Thus, this collection of Bill’s sermons is part of Covenant’s heritage.

But these sermons are not only historical artifacts. They are a spiritual resource for the Covenant community and the larger community beyond Covenant Presbyterian Church. The experience of God’s love, grace and forgiveness was central to Bill King’s understanding of the Christian faith. For Bill, the Christian gospel is not rigid dogma, but the love of God expressed in Jesus Christ. In his sermons, with personal anecdotes and humorous self-deprecating stories, Bill articulates this gospel in terms of the psychological realities and the ordinary situations of people’s everyday lives. His sermons evoke what It means to live in an awareness of God’s love and grace.

With a couple exceptions, the sermons, in a binder in the Covenant library and on Covenant’s website under the “About” and “Our Story” tabs, are presented without editing, as Bill wrote them, not for publication, but for delivery from the pulpit. They include the typos and hand-written edits in the manuscripts prepared by the pastor of a large congregation in the press of his many duties.

The sermons were selected by a volunteer panel of Covenant members.

Read Bill King's sermons HERE.