I spent the past weekend in Austin, Texas, celebrating my mother's 100th birthday.  (More on that particular extravaganza on tomorrow's Top Five Tuesday.) So one of my favorite people on earth, Devin Tharp, our Pastor of Student and Family Ministries, delivered the...

Here's a question I recently thought of regarding conversion, Calvinism, and predestination. It's based partly on my early faith experience as a 17-year-old and then partly out of an Ephesians-based bible study. Here it is: Do Calvinist Christians (great people, great...

So this happened yesterday: What was all that about?  Well, Laurel University is an intimate, picturesque, undergraduate institution with a distinctively Wesleyan approach to its theology and practice. After all, its name until 2011 was John Wesley College and many of...

I have noted with many of you before the difference between people who "think to talk" and those who "talk to think." Think to talkers ponder, meditate, and plan what they are going to say before they ever say it. Talk to thinkers process their thoughts verbally. ...

On a weekend in which we wrestled with sub-human acts across the globe, in the Good Shepherd Worship Center we focused on what it means to be a human being. Specifically, I tried to make a connection between the feel good generosity event known as Operation Christmas...

So this is the Sunday. We receiving our Operation Christmas Child boxes. We gave them out two weeks ago, along with the reminder that you're touched locally so you can touch globally. And now, as human beings, you can do just that. If you weren't with us on November 1...

Some things you just don't see anymore  . . . . . . A wooden tennis racket (Wilson Jack Kramer!); . . . Short shorts.  Really short shorts; . . . A one-handed backhand; . . . All that hair.  

Last night, we had our Zoar Impact Gathering, a meeting designed to set the vision and recruit high impact volunteers for our new campus on Zoar Road. The highlight of the evening was the talk given by Chris Thayer, who is the Campus Pastor for the site.  I was more...

As a lot of you know, I write these sermons eight weeks out. When I finish writing one, I put it in my "Sermons In Progress" file and then essentially don't look at it again until the Monday before I am to preach it the following Sunday. So for "Human Nature," I wrote...