A Mosaic Of Pastors

One day last week, Good Shepherd hosted a gathering from the Mosaix Network, which is a nation-wide ministry of like-minded pastors and church leaders.What is the subject on which all these people are like-minded?Building and growing multi-cultural churches. At Good...

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Christmas Eve Reflections

We had post-it notes all over the Worship Center on Christmas Eve.The theme had to do with "remembering" -- marking the interventions of God in your life.As a response, we invited the people to write down God's interventions on post-it notes (we put three in every...

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How Methodist?

Notice anything about these two church logos?Neither mention Methodism.Yet these are two of the most influential and effective Methodist churches in the USA -- one of them in Indiana and the other in Houston.There's some interesting conversation in the blogosphere...

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Planning A Series

So today we had a planning meeting to lay out the first Sunday morning message series of 2009.And as always happens, more and better ideas emerge out of that group than I could ever come up with on my own. Those meetings are why series like Oddballs and Loved have...

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ChristmasTIME

I love the way Galatians 4:4 puts it:"But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law . . . " (NASB).The "fulness of time" is our focus this Christmas season at Good Shepherd.The times we are in are unprecedented....

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Reading Glasses

I bought some reading glasses yesterday.#*@#.I have just gotten tired of moving the morning paper or my current novel or my bible farther and farther away from my face to read.So I gave in and bought a pair of $6 reading glasses.You know what's the worst thing about...

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Hand Written Note Stuff

Writing notes or letters by hand is fast becoming a lost art form. Almost a relic, like, well, like this letter signed by Abraham Lincoln. Except I do what I can to make sure that in our church culture at least, hand written notes become a recovered art form. That's...

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Right In Their Own Eyes

Judges 17:6 says it this way:"In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes."And when people do what is right in their own eyes . . . they usually end up doing wrong.What was the cause of the dilemma in Judges 17? A...

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Loved Goes Global

This is a picture of Eben Joseph Whisonant.He's in Vietnam now.Soon he'll be home in the Carolinas. Our very own Cathy Whisonant is there today, deeply involved in the process of adopting him. Shortly, she'll bring him home to his new family at Good Shepherd.Cathy is...

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Here I Raise Mine Ebenezer

The hymn Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing has this puzzling line: "Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I'm come . . ."What in the world is an Ebenzer? And how do you raise it?The men on our Into The Wild retreat at Camp Harrison found out this past...

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