Andy Stanley has spoken helpfully about the distinction in church life between tensions to be managed and problems to be solved.   In other words, there are certain dilemmas that pastors and church leaders will simply need to learn to live with because they...

Yesterday's message: Centered around the most famously insignificant governor of all time, Pontius Pilate;Open and closed with anecdotes involving funerals;Took a title from a relatively obscure Steve Winwood song while also referencing Lynrd Skynrd and Pink...

One of my favorite laws of literary structure is inclusio. The less technical term is bookends. Whatever you call it, it's when a section of literature (biblical or otherwise) begins and ends with the same phrase or idea. Any author who employs inclusio wants to make...

Every once in awhile, I get a fresh reminder of how the division of the bible into chapters and verses can actually get in the way of our encounter with Scripture. Case in point: some time ago, as part of preparation for a Life Group Bible Study I lead, I read Acts...

Throughout most of the 20th Century and now into the 21st, charismatic and Methodist Christians have had very little to do with each other. Charismatics, who trace their modern origins to the Azusa Street Revival in 1906, define themselves by expressive worship,...

I spent this past weekend in Austin, Texas where I had the twin delights of presiding at a wedding involving a family I've known during my entire tenure at Good Shepherd AND staying with my mother, 103-year-old Betty Davis. So Wayne Hobson started the new series off...

Jesus had an effect on people. Many of them flocked to him.  Others fell down before him.  Still others gave their desperation to him. And then others avoided him.  Or sought to trap him.  Or plotted to kill him.  Or betrayed him. He was...

Here I am on the far left, in the hat, alongside Brad Stoffel and Jeff Turpin as we pose for a newspaper photo in July of 1974. The occasion was the National Boys' 12 and Boys' 14 and under Hardcourt Championships, played at our home tennis center in Dallas, the T Bar...

At Good Shepherd, we began 2019 with a message series about anger called Up In Arms. And the first message in that series concluded by asking congregants to ask themselves three sobering questions regarding their own anger. Although almost three months have passed...

Last Friday, Julie and I had seventh row seats at John Mellencamp’s concert at Ovens Auditorium. We had seen him back in 1999 at Blockbuster, er Verizon, er PNC Music Pavilion in north Charlotte.  We thoroughly enjoyed that show and then saw him again in 2015 in...