On Sunday, I (briefly) announced a new initiative at Good Shepherd called #Invite9000. Huh? Well, here are the top five things you need to know about the project and, more importantly, how you can become part of it over the next twelve months. 1. It's a...
How to . . . Prepare a church to package 280, 000 meals on a Sunday morning? Launch a new initiative (with its own webpage!) called #Invite9000? Connect stewardship with evangelism? Include a terrific faith sharing testimony video from one of our guitar players? All...
The song "Question" is typical Moody Blues: overwrought, self-serious, and, in spite of itself, pretty good. In fact, as a teen it made a brief appearance in my "All Time Top Ten Songs" list (and yes, I still make those lists in my 50s). Here it is:...
On any given day, I’m called on to make a number of decisions. Usually, those decisions are strategic in nature: how best to align the staff, how most effectively to extend our influence, how to maximize the impact of our facilities. Sometimes I find those decisions...
Most of us in this current era assume that Methodists and emotion have an uneasy, awkward relationship. Now: Good Shepherd has its share of worship enthusiasm. There's clapping, amen-ing, and even the occasional "WOOH-ing," especially at our 11:30 gathering. So,...
Have you noticed people want you to take a stand these days? To make your decision, your position, your viewpoint known. It's true in politics, it's true in theology, and it's true in Methodism. And in thinking on these things I've realized that there are some topics...
Simul justus et peccator That's the Latin phrase Martin Luther used to describe the state of the human soul: simultaneously justified and sinful. And while I'm less Lutheran than I am Wesleyan, nevertheless, I wanted the people of Good Shepherd to catch at least a...
How much is a soul worth? Yours? Mine? The one belonging to the person you don’t know and likely will never meet? What is the ultimate value of that part of us that endures, literally, forever? Those are some of the heavy questions we’ll address during The Value Of...
Last week, Devin Tharp, who is our Pastor Of Student & Family Ministries, asked what I thought was a most interesting question: "when you were 17, what would you have been like to have in youth group?" I immediately thought two things: What an interesting...
One time several years ago, I was at the local YMCA and while doing my little workout eavesdropped on a couple of guys doing their big workout. And one said to the other, "If you work on the stuff no one sees, you really help what everyone sees." In other words, if...