1.  Decide on a ridiculous goal for a church -- 2,000 Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes to be prepared, filled, and sent around the world in cooperation with Samaritan's Purse.2.  On Saturday morning, have First Serve weekend teams assemble and...

It has been awhile since we last had a Radical Impact Project at Good Shepherd.You can read about our last two here and here.This Sunday during Gospel Share we will introduce our next one.The project itself is not so radical (wait until January for that one) but the...

Many of you are familiar with the Romans Road, a collection of verses from that signature New Testament book designed to lead people on the "road" to salvation.It starts out with our Problem from Romans 3:23:      For all have sinned and fall...

While I'm a proud Methodist, it's not often that I quote John Wesley in this space.Yet a friend sent me these words from Wesley's journal during an election year:Thur. 6. - "I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them, 1. To...

I'm interrupting my normal "Top Five Tuesday" routine -- and I love my routines -- because an article in Monday's Charlotte Observer revealed that this past Sunday (October 28) was one of the saddest days for the church in this area in a long, long time.I don't know...

As most of you know, I preach without any notes.And as many of you know, I have a fairly involved process for becoming familiar with the material I have prepared so that I can deliver without any assistance.Except yesterday at both the 8:30 and 10:00 services, I had...

When I was a young preacher in Monroe, North Carolina, the ministry of Lenny Stadler at Weddington United Methodist Church almost defied belief.Throughout the decade of the 1990s, he led what had been a sleeply little country church into the kind of growth that made...

Here's one of the questions I recently asked each of our staff to consider:How can my schedule be as full of face-to-face interactions with people as it is full of nose-to-screen interactions with my computer?Answering that question well is one of the great challenges...

The position of District Superintendent (usually called "DS" by insiders) within the United Methodist Church is something to which I have never aspired and for which I am ill-qualified.And yet on Tuesday night that's exactly what I was.Here's how and here's why: ...

On most weekends in the fall, I spend at least some time watching football.College on Saturday and pro on Sunday.And this year, it has become crystal clear to me that I enjoy the Saturday experience much more than Sunday.  I'm sure that part of that bias is...