Time change Sunday. Snow storm Sunday. But not so much snow we'd cancel church; just enough so that attendance would be dramatically impacted (halved). So what do you do? Give the people who show the best you got. And I like the message a lot as it takes Romans...
A Big 48 Hours Ahead
Here's what's up: Tonight, Friday, March 10 at 7 p.m., we're having another Night Of Worship in the Moss Road Worship Center. Full on, full color, all out Holy Spirit celebration. You won't want to miss it. Saturday March 11 before you go to bed -- SPRING FORWARD! ...
#TBT — Fall, 1967, Turning Six
Here's a childhood picture I shared with our staff on our Whimsy-Centric Staff Meeting Day (everyone had to submit a baby picture and then we took turns guessing who was who). Some highlights from this day: It was a Dinosaur Party because my mom didn't want me...
What A New Guest Revealed About My Insecurity, Methodist Superstardom, & The Soul Of Good Shepherd
Over the last two weeks, we've had a new guest at Good Shepherd, a man who is in the middle of relocating to the Carolinas from another part of the country. On his first Sunday among us, Ron Dozier was preaching and I was sitting in the congregation. Our...
Top Five Tuesday — Top Five Keys To Financial Health In A Church
This blog title is a bit presumptuous as it suggests I’ve got it all figured out. Well, I don’t. Yet for a variety of reasons, Good Shepherd has long had financial health as a church. In the worst of the 2008-2009 recession, for example, we had our best of years up to...
The “Just When I Think You’ve Said The Dumbest Thing Ever, You Keep Talking!” Sermon Rewind
So Peter's advice to Christians threatened with persecution, execution, and annihilation is so absurd, so preposterous, so over-the-top in lunacy, that it must be true. Nestled in I Peter 4:16, it's this: "but praise." The authorities are ransacking the church,...
“The Path Of Most Resistance,” Week 4 — “Just When You’ve Said The Dumbest Thing Ever, You Keep Talking!”
So far in The Path Of Most Resistance, we have challenged ourselves in these ways: Stop fighting FOR victory and start fighting FROM it. Your pain is what God uses the separate the sin he hates from the soul he loves. There's treasure in your trial, so trust. What...
#TBT — Short Shorts Alert! My Pro Tennis Victory, 1984
So back in the day, I won one (1) prize money professional tennis tournament. And since the finals of that event was televised on local cable access TV in Trenton, New Jersey, I have had the VHS for these 32 1/2 years. A friend at church recently transferred it to DVD...
Anything Left Out?
On another website deep within the United Methodist blogosphere (we put the dark in "dark web"), I came across the comment below. Written by a lay member of a United Methodist congregation in another part of the country, it contains an impassioned description of the...
Top Five Tuesday — Top Five Songs From The 90s
Ah, the 90s. The end of mullets. The beginning of grunge. The end of McEnroe & Connors and the beginning of Sampras & Agassi. The end of VHS & cassette and the beginning of CDs, DVDs, and even the internet itself. So . . . what's the soundtrack from those...