A lot of you know this already, but I'll repeat it again: I love the Steele Creek section of Charlotte. We've lived in the same house since our arrival at Good Shepherd in 1999, and I like almost everything about this unique corner of our region. Yet I have been...
How do you have a "written" sermon rewind of a sermon that you never wrote? How can you recap a message that had a spontaneous delivery, far from the norm of an internalized message stemming for a carefully prepared manuscript? Well, two friends from social media...
Riley and Taylor, summer, 1995. Sandestin Resort, Destin, Florida. Two tan kids. Very tan. And two grateful parents who in many ways got better than we deserve.
Several years ago, I read Peter Ames Carlin’s biography of Bruce Springsteen. And in reading it, I discovered something I share in common with him. Not guitar talent. Not singing voice. Not ability to write lyrics. Not even time in New Jersey — my seven years pale in...
Occasionally I will hear or see or read people in other disciplines of either art or communication or sports and think to myself: "That's the way I'd like to preach ..." So here are five. One. I'd like to preach like Jason Isbell writes songs. Personal,...
Yesterday's message ... Acknowledged that most of us are NOW people, not LATER people; Dug into Proverbs' strange command to "consider the ant"; Gave a not-so-friendly shout out to state lotteries; Landed at this bottom line: Fools want to be DELIVERED while the...
The school was Highland Park High School and our nickname was the Scots. That's why the school newspaper was called The Bagpipe. My best friend was the co-editor our senior year and so maybe he's the one who wrote the caption. I think I was pretty skillful in...
Wait, what? Why would I, a preacher in the Christian, Protestant, Methodist tradition, title a blog post "Saved By Works"? Is not our faith defined this way:"by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by...
Some preachers use words. Other preachers smith them. One of my growing edges in ministry over the last decade or so has been to abandon the former and embrace the latter. Smithing words is especially important when, in a one point sermon, you craft the bottom...
This Mother's Day gift is one of my favorite things ever. Here's why. During my Easter Sunday message, I lamented how difficult it is to represent the empty tomb artistically. The cross is much easier and as a result we have crosses that adorn our churches and...