When I was in my early twenties, I was really good at softball. I could play defense, run reasonably well, and hit for power. I got better because I had a coach, Gordon, who watched me play and gave me pointers. As a result, I positioned myself intentionally at third base depending on the batter. I chose a heavier bat
Chera, my wife, was glaring at me with the type of fire normally reserved for people who tell her Christmas music should wait till after Thanksgiving. “God is good,” she said. I nodded, more than slightly annoyed. “Say it,” still glaring. “God is good,” I half-heartedly indulged her. And then what I knew was coming. “Say it like you mean
Over lunch recently, a ministerial colleague and I were discussing the various ways local churches seek to use social media to promote their ministry. He and I have served in a variety of contexts, and we observed that similar conversations seem to happen in each situation: some people strongly feel that putting a great deal of time and energy into a catchy social media campaign will cure many of the ills of church. Properly
In the past, I’ve talked about reset as the ability to embrace and move into the new things that God has for us by not allowing the hurts of the past to hold us back. We can’t change the facts of the past, but we can change how we feel about them and how we allow them to affect us
I’ve never been pregnant. I watched my wife, a complete champion, bear three children with heroic efforts. Bearing a child means to carry the child through pregnancy to birth, when the child is born. Leading up to the birth, there are contractions. Contractions prepare the body to deliver the baby by shortening uterine muscles and dilating the cervix. As the uterus
The statement on the website shouted loudly and clearly what many people instinctively know if they let themselves notice it: The Key to Relieving Pain Is Fixing Our Misalignment. I was visiting a website that sells therapeutic insoles for people with aching feet. The promises of pain relief were backed up by “Science” and a compelling founder’s story from a man who just wanted his little boy to
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” – Matthew 5:6 The proper appetite is required to be filled: am I hungry enough? With the disciples sitting at the feet of Jesus, he shared with them key points of his teachings. In this verse, Jesus declares that those that hunger and thirst for
What do you do when a phone freezes, stops working, or is unresponsive? You toss it to the ground, step on it really hard, and make sure is completely crashed, right? Well, probably not. Most likely you do what most of us have done: we reset our phones to reactivate its functions, we don’t discard it. Depending on how bad
Churches have personalities, expressed through their organization, Christian education
processes, preaching, and worship. Each can have strengths and challenges, but the diversity is reflective of the differences we see in people, including the
Apostles.
Instead of focusing on which
organizational structure or form of worship we prefer, we need to ask if our church is manifesting Christ
I have often thought when hearing of another nose-dive from ministry, “not him?” but underlying that has been a naive attitude that has assumed that it won’t ever be me.
I believe that God wants us to enjoy our everyday lives. John 10:10 says that Jesus came to us so we may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, until it overflows). But it seems that far too many people who say they believe in Jesus are not enjoying their lives. Now, it is not only
Recently, I heard a church leader describe the instinct to “drop Facebook napalm” in an online debate. What a great image. Our cultural currency right now isn’t the American dollar or the speculative Bitcoin: it is outrage. Outrage is addictive, and it’s so easily justified: we sanctify it with the word “prophetic” or the word “faithful.” God calls us to
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…” – Isaiah 61:1 “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He
I’m at just about the halfway point of renewal leave (i.e. Sabbatical). I took my first church job in 1997, and ever since then, I’ve worked in the church. A couple of them were part-time, and then I took my first appointment at a pastor in 1999 to three small United Methodist Churches outside of Cleveland, MS. In other words,
Over the last 75 years, researchers at Harvard have tracked the lives of 724 men.* These men were children when the study began. For 75 years, they’ve been tracking these lives to record the state of their home life, work, health, outlook. Some men in the study became rich and famous. One became President of the United States. Others fared poorly. Boiling
Henry H. Knight III’s John Wesley: Optimist of Grace is a book I would like to get into the hands of as many Wesleyan Methodist pastors and lay leaders as possible. Knight has written a remarkably accessible and concise introduction to John Wesley’s life and theology without sacrificing precision and nuance. As the subtitle suggests, the core theme of this book
Children Adrift: The Old Testament Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed
There is a prayer that I recently discerned to pray: God, may all your plans for me be successful. The rationale behind this prayer is that I want to position myself and do everything that is in my power to let God fulfill his plans in my life. Notice that I did not say “my plans,” but God’s. This is
True faith is demonstrated with obedience: what you cannot see, God does. “And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the
There are seven “Woe to you” statements in Matthew 23: Jesus was warning the teachers of the law and the Pharisees not to focus on outward things. Of ten trees we had removed from our property, we knew that one was damaged. An arborist saw the spot where it had been hit by lightning. We hadn’t seen it. Other than
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