For my 12th birthday, my father sprung one of his best surprises ever on me and bought me Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon. The summer before that birthday, he and I had driven from Dallas, Texas to Knoxville, Tennessee for a tennis tournament (the National Boys'...

Carly Simon said it this way:  "Anticipation . . . it's making me late, it's keeping me waiting." And some things in life are more full of anticipation than others.  Some days and some events are so full of excitement and promise that waiting for them to arrive really...

There was much to anticipate as we opened up Mad People Disease.  I title a like, a promo video I love, a topic that hits close to home, and a series of messages that have felt very good in preparation. And then for this week, I landed at a bottom line that wasn't the...

1.  I like the title. 2.  It's an important subject. 3.  Drumroll please . . . it for sure has my favorite promo video of all time:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9qupwemqNA   Sunday. 8:30.  10.  11:30.  Who will you invite?

A few years ago, I bought The Collected Sermons Of Fred B. Craddock.  Craddock, who died earlier this year, was a long-time professor of preaching at Emory University's Candler School Of Theology. So, coming from a graduate of Asbury Seminary, this post is almost like...

In her memoir Lots Of Candles, Plenty Of Cake, Anna Quindlen offers these reflections on marriage, longevity, and parenting: If a marriage is to endure over time, it has to be because both people within it have tacitly acknowledged something that young lovers might...

I missed church on Sunday.  But I had a really good reason to do so. Julie and I spent this weekend in Queens, New York, taking in two full days of the US Open tennis tournament.  With all the travelling Julie does for her job, both flights and accomodations were...

This ad came in an e-blast from Christianity Today magazine: The opening line makes me sound kind of like preaching's Stephen King, but I kinda like it.  

Romans 1:16-17 is a clarion call for New Testament Christians.  It also sets the agenda for the rest of the letter: 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the...

I'm going to be a bit arbitrary here: "contemporary Christian" music really started in the 1970s.  That's when churches and their leaders first discovered that if they could communicate gospel truths in the (relatively) new medium of pop/rock music, they could reach...