In one of the most memorably ironic moments in all of Scripture, Pontius Pilate washes his hands of Jesus and declares to the mob:“I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”  (Matthew 27:24) The irony, of course, is that...

I have been wrestling recently with the different roles that I have played in the different sermon series of 2013.Not that I have been different people or that I am merely acting a part.It's just that different series demand distinct aspects of the pastoral...

Monday's post gave the background for and manuscript of Sunday's sermon called Conceived By The Holy Spirit, Born Of The Virgin Mary.The hook, as you may recall, was Luke's slightly sarcastic, thoroughly in-your-face comment:  "He was the son, so it was...

Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" (John 18:38)And true to form, Jesus doesn't answer the question.  He leaves it hanging there, still to be wrestled with 2,000 years later.In the world of church, truth matters.  A lot.  We try to decipher it...

Yesterday's exploration of third line of the Apostles' Creed -- Conceived By The Holy Spirit, Born Of The Virgin Mary -- jumped off of four simple words from Luke 3:23:So it was thought.I was first alerted to the significance of those four words in a though-provoking...

One of the ways we measure how well we are inviting all people into a living relationship with Jesus Christ is through what we call serving in love.  The more people who adopt a servant life-style -- fostered by but not limited to church-related projects --...

I realize that when most people don't know what to do they do what they always do.In other words, when faced with uncertainty, crisis, or chaos, most of us revert back to what is comfortable and fall back into the familiar.This realization is especially instructive...

Yesterday included two events not normally on my ministry schedule:  1) a pre-school celebration for our 2s & 3s classes and 2) a high school girls' softball game, cheering on a couple of young women from our church.So why do I label today's post "Tuesday...

Rock music is full of songs named after . . . females.(Note: I almost titled the post "Named After Girls" but that's politically incorrect and I then almost opted for "Named After Women" but that's less-than-accurate, so I opted for the non-offensive and...

Back when I was in seminary and serving an internship in a small church in central Kentucky, the pastor let me preach on the second Sunday in May.  So I did.  I have no idea what I preached about.Except that I didn't preach about mothers.Afterwards, I was...