Reaching into my bookcase recently, I was startled to pull out these two gems that helped move me to United Methodist ministry.  I honestly thought I had loaned them out to someone who neglected to return them . . . but there they were, right where I had left them in...

On Sunday evening, we celebrated the outdoor baptism of some of our favorite Good Shepherd people. We explained to the families, friends, and supporters that baptism is the entire Easter weekend in an instant:  dying with Christ, buried in death, and then, gloriously,...

I think I've been preparing this sermon for 26 years. Dealing with diversity, the church, the biblical text of Ephesians, and with a few shout outs to Methodism in between, here is Causes & Their Effects. It landed at this bottom line: When it comes to ethnicity...

This Sunday's Wake Up Call sermon and service is vital for understanding not only the Holy Spirit but Good Shepherd Church itself. I have love thinking about and then preparing this message, and I am unusually excited to deliver it. And as if that wasn't enough, we've...

  Here’s one of the questions I recently asked each of our staff to consider:How can my schedule be as full of face-to-face interactions with people as it is full of nose-to-screen interactions with my computer? Answering that question well is one of the great...

For over 17 years now, I have taught the new member class at Good Shepherd.  The group's current name is Next Step, as in "helping you take your next step in your living relationship with Jesus Christ." In all of its iterations, one session out of the four (or five,...

  One of my earliest memories — say from when I was four or five years old — is the awareness that I have a very unusual first name.And early on, I didn’t like it. First, it was easy to make all kinds of vaguely insulting nicknames out of it.  TalBUTT was the...

For the second week in row, my Wake Up Call sermon wasn't really about the sermon. Last Sunday, it led to my interview with Ron Hall. And yesterday, it served as the set up for an interactive time of "praying in the Spirit." I must say, the movements of breathing,...

Maybe it's because we're in a series on the Holy Spirit. Maybe it's because I see the cultural and individual fallout from casual Christianity. Or maybe it's just because of what I see in the mirror. But the whole notion of a Jesus "bait and switch" is on my mind...

The phrase "a steady diet" has been on my mind the last several weeks. That's because so many in the Christian world are on a constant quest for a a spiritual banquet -- the perfect retreat, conference, workshop, or worship service -- where we can have an authentic...