Yep, I'm headed here, to Lake Wylie Elementary School:     I will be working with a fourth grader every Monday during the school year on improving his reading skills. Like I told our church, I can't repair home, but I can help with reading. I am one of about...

What?! A Sunday that's not part of a series at Good Shepherd? A stand-alone, independent Sunday worship gathering? Yep, that's right. Wake Up Call is complete and Nooks & Crannies starts on Sept. 18, so this Sunday, Sept. 11, is all about a youthful expression of...

In addition to thinking about The Curse Of Knowledge recently (see yesterday's post), I've also been thinking about the dichotomy between the strategic and the spiritual. Some churches -- indeed, some organizations -- are so wrapped up in strategy that they seldom if...

I've been thinking a lot about The Curse Of Knowledge recently. Just what is The Curse Of Knowledge? This:  once you know something, you forget what it's like not to know it. The applications in church life are almost endless: Once you know the Apostle's Creed, you...

In lieu of a Top Five Tuesday (or Sermon Rewind Monday), I give you Sunday's Sing Spiritually worship gathering from Good Shepherd. Sing Spiritually was the culmination of Wake Up Call and was noteworthy for a number of reasons: Instead of a sermon, we had a guided...

I love it when a series takes me by surprise. And Wake Up Call has done just that. People have resonated with the calls to ministry, the invitations to community, and the urging to awaken to the ongoing power and ministry of the Holy Spirit. And then it concludes...

  During a Next Step group, a woman made the most interesting observation about Good Shepherd:This is not a big church.  It’s a church where a lot of people belong. And I did what I always do in a situation like that:  exclaimed “that will preach!” and then wrote...

Reaching into my bookcase recently, I was startled to pull out these two gems that helped move me to United Methodist ministry.  I honestly thought I had loaned them out to someone who neglected to return them . . . but there they were, right where I had left them in...

On Sunday evening, we celebrated the outdoor baptism of some of our favorite Good Shepherd people. We explained to the families, friends, and supporters that baptism is the entire Easter weekend in an instant:  dying with Christ, buried in death, and then, gloriously,...

I think I've been preparing this sermon for 26 years. Dealing with diversity, the church, the biblical text of Ephesians, and with a few shout outs to Methodism in between, here is Causes & Their Effects. It landed at this bottom line: When it comes to ethnicity...