We concluded the On The Up And Up series with an old-fashioned yet new-fangled invitation to faith. Psalm 130:3 asks plaintively: If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, who could stand? The answer to the question on the literal level is, of course, no one. And yet...

You know all those records that will never be broken, right? Joe DiMaggio hitting in 56 straight games; John Isner and Nicolas Mahut going to 70-68 in the fifth set; UCLA's seven straight NCAA basketball championships; Pete Maravich averaging 44 points per game in...

On Wednesday, I had lunch with a new Good Shepherd friend who grew up in Angola. My friend connected with Good Shepherd about ten months ago and has been a faithful attender ever since.  His young adult daughters are some of the best volunteers we have in our K-Zone...

    Here we are during a recent beach trip. From left: Riley, 22, assigned to serve with Campus Crusade for Christ at the University Of Tennessee beginning later this fall; Taylor, 25, working in corporate communications in Atlanta; Julie, a Senior Vice...

Since January of this year, I've had braces.  The invisible kind. I've had crowding on my lower teeth all my life and then earlier this year noticed the uppers were becoming more misaligned as well, and that was that.  I have an orthodontist friend at Good Shepherd...

For yesterday's message . . . what happened in the lobby afterwards was more important than what happened in the Worship Center during; the church got to learn a new word; the church was able to celebrate its own remarkable history of generosity and impact; the bottom...

  But you have to admit, it would have been fabulous.

William Faulkner  once famously noted, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” I wonder if he ever spent time in my office. People bring a lot of baggage from their past that ends up poisoning their present. Both things done to them and things they’ve done to...

After over 25 years of full-time pastoral ministry, I believe I have a reasonably good understanding of how it works. Or how it doesn’t. So what are those things that a pastor needs to avoid if he or she will have both an effective ministry and a vibrant spiritual...

I love the last line of the Apostles’ Creed: [. . . I believe] in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen. While the Creed may not have the same level of authority as inspired Scripture, it nevertheless represents the best of the collective wisdom...