How much is a soul worth? Yours? Mine? The one belonging to the person you don’t know and likely will never meet? What is the ultimate value of that part of us that endures, literally, forever? Those are some of the heavy questions we’ll address during The Value Of...
Last week, Devin Tharp, who is our Pastor Of Student & Family Ministries, asked what I thought was a most interesting question: "when you were 17, what would you have been like to have in youth group?" I immediately thought two things: What an interesting...
One time several years ago, I was at the local YMCA and while doing my little workout eavesdropped on a couple of guys doing their big workout. And one said to the other, "If you work on the stuff no one sees, you really help what everyone sees." In other words, if...
We all have deadlines, but then again, we all have distractions, too. So what are some ways in the digital age to increase productivity, in ministry and otherwise? Here are five that are helping me: 1.Screen off, music on. I realized on Monday night that I got more...
So in delivering "Help For Going It Alone," I didn't go it alone. Instead, I invited Morgan Enright, one of the leading therapists in Charlotte, to have a conversation with me about single parenting and single living in the 21st century. I am including my...
So we wind up Nooks & Crannies this Sunday in an unexpected place: what do you do when you're the only adult trying to discover meaning in the massively small places in your home and in your relationships? What does it look like for single adults and single...
As the Nooks & Crannies series nears its conclusion, these reflections on marriage and family from Anna Quindlen's memoir Lots Of Candles, Plenty Of Cake bear repeating: If a marriage is to endure over time, it has to be because both people within it have...
One day last week, I went to the home of a family in the church to see how the man of the house was holding up after shoulder surgery. No crisis, no drama, no life-and-death; instead, an opportunity to get to know some folks beyond "hey, how's it going?" on a Sunday...
This past Friday, Julie and I went to the Fillmore, Charlotte to see a Led Zeppelin cover band called Zoso. I consider this payback for the two Jack Wagner concerts Julie made me attend with her in the 1980s. Actually, I probably still have some payback built up from...
After years of keeping my distance from the opening chapters of Genesis, I am now firmly in love with them. I'd never really known what to do with stories like Adam & Eve in the garden, Cain & Abel in the field, and the Lord himself as both a tailor of leather...