"Unstoppable Transformation"

Sermon by The Rev.Ranie Neislar

August 17, 2025

I am from Georgia, but I am putting roots down here in Birmingham, naming this city as our home. Birmingham was built on raw materials—iron, coal, limestone—that combined to make steel, earning it the name Magic City. Transformation and creativity are trademarks of God’s power and of this city. Like Sloss Furnace, once abandoned but reborn as a place for community, we too are called to be transformed. Fire can destroy, but it can also refine and strengthen like steel. All Saints has literally risen from the ashes, a prophetic community embodying God’s lasting word. We are like those rocks broken into smaller stones, renewed for new work. At heart, All Saints is a place of unstoppable transformation—a Magic City Church—where God’s power makes us stronger so we can go out and do God’s work. And so, if you had to make a statement about what God is saying to you here, how would you finish this sentence: And God said…