Paul was a wordsmith. While other biblical artists draw word pictures, Paul's specialty is word "pile ons."  He explains his words with more words.  He adds to his arguments with more words.  Words are his currency and he spends them well. And yet in 2 Corinthians...

In preparation for our team's recent India Mission trip, I drew this map of the sub-continent to help the team as I gave them a historico-geo-political history lesson in our on-the-plane briefing session.   You're welcome. (Many of you have asked when we might...

I am not stuck in the 70s and 80s when it comes to my musical tastes. Really, I'm not. (Actually, the more I declare it, the less you believe it, I know.) But for sure my favorite "current" artist is Jason Isbell.  My 25 year old son Riley is the first one to tell me...

Yesterday's message, which launched the ThanksLiving series, had a couple of goals: To ground the OBJECT of our gratitude not in the "God of the LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR" but instead very specifically in the God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; To move us away...

Thanksgiving.  It’s what we do.  We travel, we gather, we pray, we eat, we watch football, we sleep, and then we prepare for Christmas.  It’s the same year after year. But ThanksLiving?  It’s not what we do.  It’s who we are.  Or, in the case of Good Shepherd Church,...

Think of all the things that get our double takes: Beautiful people. Sunsets on the beach. Sunrise on the beach. Mist rising from the mountains. The colors in a kaleidoscope. A city skyline at night. Beautiful people. And James throws in this line early in his...

Matthew Bates' Salvation By Allegiance Alone has been a mind-bending, soul-shaping, and preacher-salivating read for me over the last few weeks. Here's the thesis in a nutshell: It's a Gospel that starts with Jesus instead of me and culminates more with a Savior who...

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 name of...

I still buy books and CDs.  Books you can touch and CDs you place in a player. My children (28 and 25) consider it almost inconceivable that I buy music in CD format and books in bound format.  To them, music & books are what you download, and I’m wasting time,...

Throughout the years, I have told a number of Good Shepherd staffers that as much as I love planning and preparing sermons as well as leading LifeGroup conversations, there come times when I simply have "to feel like a pastor today." By that I mean the urgency to...