James 1:22 is one of the more familiar verses in Scripture. I love how the King James version translates it:But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.We get the "doers of the word" part -- most of us Methodist are more than...
Our Partners In India
The ministry in India didn't stop just because Chris Thayer, James-Michael Smith, and I came back home. In fact, you could say it's advancing better than ever. Our partners in the Love Your Neighbor Ministry, located in the territory where Christians have been...
Top Five Tuesday — Top Five Sports Venues I’d Like To Visit
I've been to some pretty nice sporting events in my time. I've been to the U.S. Open tennis tournament (of course). I've been to the Cotton Bowl. I've been to the Charlotte Coliseum and then when it became "out of date" at the tender age of 14, I went to Time Warner...
Sin’s Splatter
We showed this as a lead in to yesterday's sermon:: The piece was conceived, written, art-directed, and recorded by people from within the Good Shepherd community. It helped reinforce the message's main idea: What you hide in order to have will haunt you. I suspect...
What’s Ahead
Here's what we have over the next four days, a schedule about which we're not ashamed:Thursday, April 5 from 7 - 9 p.m.: Spring Breakthrough Closing Party at the Corner Campus, complete with surprise guest.Friday, April 6 from 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.: Good Friday Prayer...
A Unified Mission (Guest Blog)
Hello faithful readers! My name is Thomas Hinson and I am on staff at GS as a Student Ministries Assistant. Talbot has so graciously allowed me to blog on his behalf this wonderful Wednesday.For those of you who don't know, and those of you who do, we are just over...
How India Wakes Up
One of our hosts here in the city of Balasore -- a man who has spent some time in the United States -- explained to me the difference between waking up in the US and waking up in India."In America, you wake up to silence," he said. "In India, we wake up to noise."As I...
A Different Way To Keep Score
As a kid, I was fascinated with how scoreboards worked ... their size, the amount of information they included, and even whether or not they had a digital clock or an old school time dial.So maybe it's no surprise that more times than I care to admit I see ministry...
Competition, Comparison, Futility
From the ages of 8-18, I had one goal in life: to become the number one tennis player my age in the state of Texas.The good news is that it actually happened. After a string of second place finishes, I finally won it all when I was 17. I liked it well enough that I...
Top Five Tuesday — Top Five Scriptures On Eternal Life
While it can be dangerous to attach too much importance to single verses of Scripture -- thereby yanking them out of context -- nevertheless there is something so powerful about certain sentences in the bible.Especially those that speak of eternal life.These are the...