Finished Business While hanging on the cross and in the throes of death, Jesus called out: “It is finished.” But just what got “finished” in that moment?  What was completed in the last week of Jesus’ life on earth that could not have been accomplished any other way?...

Some random, disconnected thoughts on the first Thursday of March Madness . . . . At Good Shepherd, we have to take care that we don't "brand the bullets & forget to brand the gun"; which means, as one expert told us, don't spend so much time promoting individual...

I spent the last couple of days in what's called The Triangle of North Carolina (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill), leading a cadre of students from the Duke Divinity School in a workshop called Sermons That Pop & Series That Stick. Wha-what?! The reason that is...

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...

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! ...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...