What does an ancient piece of Hebrew poetry like Psalm 122 have to do with the 4th of July weekend in the USA. Quite a lot, actually. And the reason why has everything to do with the pronouns. To see what I mean, it's Sunday. 8:30. 10. 11:30. ...
I've noticed that I keep hearing the same things come out of my mouth. So I'm not really saying more. I'm saying the same things in different contexts and in different settings and to different people. Here are a few: And there's two more coming out in September! She...
Earlier this week, I was able to visit in the home of a man who has been home bound for most of the last year. My schedule opened up in a way that I could drop by his place in the early evening and suddenly it was 1995 all over again: an impromptu visit, an open...
So last Friday, I wasn't going to Tweet about it. I wasn't going to get on Facebook and argue about it. I wasn't even going to change my Sunday sermon to address it directly. Instead, I've located some wise voices to speak into what it means that marriage equality is...
Well, three out of four of those things are true. I wrestled with the message's bottom line all week. I knew the sermon was good, but the original bottom line lacked some stick. I said in the 11:30 that that dilemma was almost like being all in favor of marriage,...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBia-3XGDdU Our lives are always headed somewhere. For some of us, we’re taking a step back. Others, moving from one side to another. But what would it look like if our life trajectory was headed up? What if the phrase “on...
Yesterday afternoon, I went to jail. Then to a hospital room. Then to another hospital room. Then to a nursing home. I was out of the office and away from my computer for several hours straight. That's really not that unusual -- at least for the course of most of my...
My young friend Aaron handed me this note on Sunday: Here are some highlights of his prose: I hope it would help to invite readers to come to Good Shepherd to be invited into a living relationship with Jesus Christ. He KNOWS & REPEATS THE MISSION STATMENT!...
I don't know. I think this photo of Joey Hopper, our Family Ministries Worship Leader, and his young acolyte Caden Macedo, pretty much covers numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, don't you? The beard will appear next week, I'm sure.
The final message in the BrainWashing series wasn't so much a sermon as a guided series of movements. Working off the premise that To Clear Your Head, Lift Your Heart, I wanted people actually to experience that ways in which various acts of worship led to more...