I love hearing people talk. Especially when, with the best of intentions, they get important words just a little bit wrong. So here are five of my favorite most mispronounced words: 1.  It has to begin with a personal story.  When I was 17, I was captain of our high...

With the way my mind and my psyche work, I very rarely have last-minute inspirations. Yet yesterday, while eating breakfast at 5:45 in the morning, I had one.  I realized how we needed to bring the service to a close. Here's the bottom line of the message you'll read...

The last few years at Good Shepherd have been highlighted by a number of Sunday mornings in which we used the sermon time to give plain proclamation of what it means to be saved by grace and then used the response time to give a clear invitation for people to enter...

For years, my favorite bible to read had a page layout something like this: Note:  each verse stands out, separated from what came before it and what comes after it.  For years, I found such a layout to be both easy on my eyes and an aid to bible memory.  After all,...

Many of you know that I spend a fair amount of my time in a role commonly described as "pastoral counseling." People make appointments, come in either as individuals or as couples, and share their burdens with me, seeking at some level to have both a human and a...

Below is a sermon that STARTS with a promise to offend, ENDS with a triumphant declaration regarding the authority of Christ from a second grader's mouth, and in between takes a tour of one of Scriptures most majestic mountaintops:  Philippians 2:5-11. It also led to...

" . . . whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” The unforgiveable sin is not something you do. It's an attitude you have. It's not an act you commit. It's a journey you take. And it becomes a journey that...

Get ready for an ouch. A lot of you like storms better than you like calm. Why?  Because when it’s calm it’s much harder to complain. And some of us simply cannot be happy unless we have something to complain about. It’s why we sabotage relationships. It’s why we...

If you've never doubted, you've only half-believed. Faith has never been easy, and doubts are not your enemy.  Pretending is.  Hear that again:  Doubts are not your enemy.  Pretending is. If we've never doubted, if we've never wrestled with issues of faith, our belief...

Yesterday, November 30, 2015, was a normal Monday in ministry.  I've been through more than a thousand such Mondays in my years of full-time ministry. Yet if you read between the lines, look beneath the covers, and wash behind your ears . . . you can see some pretty...