The first series of any year is important. Churches and pastors have an opportunity to engage with people whose New Year's Resolution includes "trying church again"; we have an opportunity to minister to folks who are IN TOWN all month long; and we can connect with...
When I was a kid, the week between Christmas and New Year’s typically meant the Cotton Bowl. The tennis tournament, not the football game. Huh? That’s right. Dallas was then and is now the host of a holiday-flavored, mostly-indoor tennis tournament. Back in the day,...
I am a Wesleyan today because I was first a Calvinist. Huh? Yeah, my first extended church experience after coming to faith as a teenager was at a lovely church in Dallas called Believer’s Chapel. Though I was very new to the faith and didn’t initially have the...
Sermon map? What about a sermon rewind? Well, yesterday's message was as departure in a few notable ways. First, it was mapped out but never manuscripted. Second, it drew a distinction between the view of time in Eastern religions -- it is endlessly cyclical -- and...
A little known fact about Advent and Christmas: in Christian thinking, Jesus first appearance is designed to heighten our anticipation for his second. What does that mean? What will it look like? What about all the books, charts, and graphs that we can buy that tell...
My message from Tuesday night's Christmas Eve services ... Began with our congregation standing and reading Luke 2:1-7 out loud and together;Pivoted on Paul's affirmation in Philippians 3:12 that Christ Jesus had first grabbed on to him;Was about 2/3 the length of a...
Yesterday's sermon ... Came from a not-very-Christmasy section of Scripture, Romans 8:35-39;Taught that in Paul's life, Paul's "hypothetical" list of separators in Romans 8:35 was actually anything BUT hypothetical;Talked about the relentlessness of our son when it...
Lionel Richie may have sung it, but Paul wrote about it and I'm going to preach it. God's "with-ness" can't be separated from his "love-ness" which, as you'll see, is stuck on you. What does all this have to do with Christmas? Only everything. Check it out. Sunday....
In the aftermath of Sunday's sermon in which the bottom line was God shakes you up to send you out a Good Shepherd stalwart approached me. "Thank you for that sermon," she said. "I always thought that it was Satan who gave me cancer but after the message I think maybe...
My Good Shepherd friend Susan Salzman brought her daughter Brooke Cantrell (right) and granddaughter Makaylah Cantrell (left), and they got a kick out of a certain photo collage that's part of our lobby gallery: