I recently struck up a conversation with a man in a park. I mentioned that I was a pastor and after a brief conversation he revealed that he drank and smoked and asked if he would be welcomed in my church. I jokingly pointed out...
I will soon turn 61 years old. I remember when I thought that was old. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things I don’t remember these days. Perhaps the most frustrating memory lapses are when I forget passwords to online sites. And just this week,...
An old friend from college recently posted something on Facebook that held within it much more than first meets the eye: “People who wonder if the glass is half-empty or half-full miss the point. The glass is refillable.” This post was alcohol-themed, but I replied...
Who shot J.R.? That’s a short sentence that in 1980 created a television tradition that continues to this day: the season-ending cliffhanger. “Dallas” was one of the most-watched series on television at the time and much of America spent that summer waiting for the answer....
I recently discovered that two passages in the Bible create perfect bookends for my life. When I was a young boy, I was very strong in the Catholic faith. I asked for and received a Bible (which I still own) for Christmas when I was...
A friend recently told me that attendance is declining at their church. When I asked why, there were several reasons given. But the first was the worship music. Often people cite environmental rather than spiritual reasons for leaving a church or attending less regularly. “The...
Have you ever flown in a commercial jet when it was raining at takeoff? There is something amazing about slowly rising above the storm. If it happens during the day, it’s a special treat. For you, it’s suddenly a sunny day. Those below are wrestling...
When President Ronald Reagan appointed the Rogers’ Commission in 1986 to investigate the Shuttle Challenger disaster, he chose Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong as its vice-chairman. Seventeen years earlier, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon and Reagan likely realized that his...
I recently became acquainted with the expression “you have what you tolerate.” O.S. Hawkins has used it in several of his books, referring to the current state of our culture and how Christ-followers have tolerated a society that’s steadily moving away from God. I have...
It’s become fashionable in many churches to strive to avoid the use of “Christianese.” This is a made-up name for church lingo that can be off-putting to new believers or the “God curious” because they don’t understand what it means, and nobody tells them. One...