All of our students will be back in their classrooms very soon when college classes begin. It will not be long before students will be taking exams and grades will be handed out. Of course, grading does not end with schooling. We are evaluated in...
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, famously said, “Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set...
One of the hardest things people can try to do is see the world through someone else’s eyes. I am, for the most part, pretty good at knowing how to be me. I can be reasonably self-aware and have some understanding of how I tick,...
I am glad so many of you have enjoyed our “See You at the Movies” sermon series. I would like to think you are enjoying it because of the great worship and the riveting sermons…I would like to think that…but I know many of you...
What tastes bad to you? People have lots of different answers to that question. Our mouths have roughly 2,000 – 8,000 taste buds that pick up five different types of flavors: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. (And, no, I didn’t make up that last...
Happy 4th of July! I know many of you will be celebrating today by enjoying time with family and friends. Today is a day set apart to remember the day our founders drew a line in the sand and said things would never be the...
In a little less than six months, it will be Christmas. Some of you more dedicated Christmas people already knew that, and the rest of you are wondering why in the world that matters. We are in the midst of the summer swelter with a...
Quarterbacks (and leaders, in general) are said to get too much credit for wins and too much blame for defeats. The proverbial buck has to stop somewhere, and we are usually glad it does not stop with us. We see this play out in many...
I shared on Sunday that while I was preparing for our first message in our series “Come As You Are,” a new detail from Gideon’s story jumped out at me. When God calls Gideon to deliver Israel from the Midianites, Gideon tries to talk God...
I was running the other day, and I saw a freshly cut lawn and a lawnmower in the front yard, near the house. What grabbed my attention was the uncut grass under the mower. Did they run out of gas? Did the mower break down?...
Membership is a concept with which many people can relate. People are members of country clubs, political parties, families, civic clubs, and churches, to name a few groups. There are established standards of behavior to be a member. Without a standard, people do what they...
Sometimes I look at the life of Paul in the New Testament and I wonder what he thought of his ministry. Did he struggle with doubt? Did he think his ministry was a failure because his churches dealt with in-fighting and the inability or unwillingness...
April 29, 2011. Joseph Buck V was 11 days old. Lindsey and I were preparing to move to a new church in about six weeks with a live-wire 19-month-old to boot. People thought we were crazy! Those were exciting times. That day was exciting for another...
Dwelling on past victories is a quick way to stifle the dynamic movement of God in our lives. If I learned anything from our sermon series on Revelation, it was that God wants us working and moving toward the end goal of Jesus’ victory over...
If there is one aspect of our current sermon series on Revelation that goes with me each week, it is the consistent inconsistency of the Christian journey. John started off the letter in the present and never stops moving between the present and the future...