In William Skidelsky's Federer & Me: A Story Of Obsession, there is a chapter devoted to Federer's nemesis/foil/kryptonite, Rafael Nadal. Here's the opening page of that chapter. If you are not a tennis fan, you're bewildered. If you are a tennis fan and a Rafael...
In the early part of November, Good Shepherd teammates Ron Dozier, James-Michael Smith, and Shannon Schauber carried our mission of inviting all people to India. (Because of security concerns, we kept much of the trip on the social media downlow.) What did your...
In lieu of a sermon yesterday, we played the Billy Graham Association's short film, The Value Of A Soul. This is the third such short film Sunday we've had -- in 2014 it was Defining Moments and in 2015 it was Lose To Gain. Each of the films weaves together art,...
Some of you know that this past Monday (Nov. 14) was my birthday. As happens in the age of Facebook, I was inundated with birthday wishes. And one note in particular was especially interesting. It came from a friend who was on my high school tennis team in Dallas. ...
A Good Shepherd friend told me this week that she is "a poster child for our mission statement." Meaning? "I knew about Jesus," she said. "But I didn't know what it meant to have a living relationship with him til I got here." And: "I'm not just a poster child for...
I don’t hear many pastors of churches our style talk about funeral ministry. Sometimes I get the impression that if your church is somehow “contemporary” or “large” or even “mega,” then people in the congregation don’t die, so pastors don’t have to devote much time or...
How could we . . . a) receive "promise cards" (aka, pledge cards) for 2017 generosity; AND b) distribute "movie tickets" for our short film Sunday next week? Answer: "In The Long Run" (yes, title borrowed from chorus of an Eagles' song), a sermon with this...
In my occasional dark nights of the soul, I wonder: “is what I’m doing anything other than some motivational speaking on a Sunday morning?” Seriously: do people come to Good Shepherd or to any church simply to have their ears tickled and the hearts touched? To feel...
As a lot of you know, first time guests to Good Shepherd get a coffee mug delivered to their front door later on Sunday. We've been doing it that way for well over 20 years. What's unusual is to receive a thank you note in return for the mug. Yet that's what happened...
If you thought about it -- and maybe I'm the only one who did -- it might have struck you as kind of odd that we devoted an entire Sunday to preparing and packing 285,000 meals for people in Haiti while we are in the middle of a message series called The Value Of A...