This Sunday, I will begin my message in a way I have never begun a message before. Never. But I can't tell you what it is. You'll need to be there in person. It's ThanksLiving, Week 3, and it's called What A Privilege To Carry. Sunday. 8:30, 10, 11:30 at the Moss...

This comes from my high school yearbook (called "The Highlander") when I was a senior in 1980. I I I   I won the Intramural Ping Pong -- er, table tennis -- Championship.  I know adidas was super glad to get the free publicity.

Last Sunday (November 11) was my first message in 2018's ThanksLiving series.  The bottom line I eventually uncovered/discovered has some real "stickiness" to it, but the process of arriving there was anything but simple.  Here's what I mean. I first had the Scripture...

I have a confession:  earlier in my ministerial career I treated any conversation about church mission statements with the dreaded eye roll. "Not again," I thought.  "There goes someone pontificating about mission and vision, which if you ask me is just a lot of talk...

Yesterday's message ... Led to a nerve-wracking yet liberating "open mic" time; Raised the possibility that the nine people with with leprosy who DIDN'T come back in Luke 17 might not have had healing that endures; Taught that nothing happens by accident in Luke...

As we anticipate the Christmas season and its nativity stories, I have found myself in a couple of different settings explaining how each Gospel begins. Because I believe that how each begins also shapes how each one ends.  Let me show you what I mean.    ...

Yesterday, I posted about the Weekend Wedding of our daughter Taylor to Nate Underwood in Nashville, Tennessee. As part of our trip to Nashville, Julie and I dropped by the United Methodist Publishing House, to meet Brian Sigmon, a young man twenty years my junior (!)...

Julie and I spent last weekend in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, where our daughter Taylor married Nate Underwood.  After a honeymoon in Cancun, the couple will reside in the Crieve Hall section of Nashville. But here's an illustrated look at a wedding by the numbers. About...

As a lot of you know, I am seldom away from the Good Shepherd pulpit. Yesterday was one of those days. I felt my daughter's wedding in Nashville, Tennessee, was a good reason to miss. So I asked Ron Dozier, our Pastor Of Missions & Community Impact, to open up our...

Here I am as a senior in high school, on the far left of the picture, with Brad Stoffel and his high school tennis coach, Bill Fleming. I'm posting this today because tomorrow, November 2, is Brad's 57th birthday.  (And also because I miss all that blond hair.) Why do...