I think I was in 2nd or 3rd grade when this one was taken. I remember I LOVED that yellow shirt. I remember this has a carefree time.  Until I heard from one of my friends from back in that time, a guy who I hadn't had any contact with in 40 years or so.  He wrote, "I...

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.  Here's a backhand from that...

It's almost sacreligious to say, but I've never been an especially ardent fan of the Beatles.  While I admit that they are by far the most influential and enduring of all rock bands, my personal tastes have leaned more towards the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and...

Yesterday's message .... Wrapped up the "Up In Arms" series; Began with Scripture as opposed to anecdotes or concepts; The Scripture with which it began was Jesus turning over the tables in the temple in Mark 11; Landed at this bottom, in the form of a question:  Who...

What a journey in Up In Arms. We started out by realizing together that the people who yell the loudest have the most to hide.  Then it was you justify your anger when you can't justify your behavior. Then last week Wayne Hobson brought down the house with a message...

If you've been following the Australian Open at all, then you may have noticed that the featured matches are played on something called Rod Laver Arena. Laver, for those uninitiated in the ways of tennis, was a pro player from Australia who won all four Grand Slam...

This has been one of my primary dilemmas in church leadership:  do you rely on strategy or lean on the Spirit? Here’s what I mean.  Back in the day, many churches (including Good Shepherd) adopted a model of church function and leadership that centered on a baseball...

One of the treasures I brought back to Charlotte with me after a weekend in Austin, Texas was this copy of Jack London's The Call Of The Wild. ----------------------------------- My mother used to read this one to me as we sat by the heating vent in my parents'...

While I spent this past weekend with my mother (Betty Davis, age 103) in Austin, Texas, Wayne Hobson brought the message in the third week of the Up In Arms series. Wayne was witty, insightful, compelling, and, in the words of a Good Shepherd friend, "he hit it out of...

Over the last couple of posts, I have distinguished between ancient Greek speech making and modern American letter writing as we looked at the New Testament letter of Paul to the Ephesians. And Ephesians is 100% the former and 0% the latter. The pronouns have told us...