The man behind the book of Ecclesiastes is one of the most intriguing in all of Scripture. He is a case study in one whose heart lost its heat for God throughout a lifetime. His life prompts me to ask, How do giants redwoods of the faith fall from grace? Recently, the Christian world was rocked with the scandal of Ravi Zachariah. His posthumous witness has all but eroded his character while tarrin...

Spring is one of my favorite times of the year. I begin to dream about outdoor projects in my garden and yard. I take more walks and attempt running, unsuccessfully. This Spring is especially sweet because of what I was able to do in November of 2020. During the Fall of last year, two different people handed me trash bags full of flower bulbs. They told me what kind they were, but I forgot what ty...

A quick search of “Sermons” on Youtube will generate video images of Billy Graham, T.D. Jakes, John Piper, Craig Groeschel, Dr. Charles Stanley, and Matt Chandler. If you want to have some fun, search funniest or worst sermons. A quick search on google for “sermons” will result in 146,000,000 results in .51 seconds. Yikes! The variety and excess of sermons available to us are astounding. It is pos...

Pastoring a church today is challenging on many fronts. One of those fronts is navigating the biblical call for maintaining unity among the local and global body of Christ, and the call for pursuing the purity of the local and global church as well. A pastor can feel like a pinball getting knocked around between battles over purity and brawls for unity as though the two are in opposition to one an...

In January 2021 I celebrated my 25th consecutive year serving as a Senior / Lead Pastor in a local church. Over that time, I have concluded that we pastors are often our own worst enemy. Before you click away to another article, let me explain. So much of what we do as pastors is convictional by nature. We study God’s Word, we prepare sermons from God’s Word, we live in a world that is filled with...

What is the central focus of our preaching?“That was a great sermon, Pastor!” “Pastor, you sure can tell a story. You really told it like it is in that sermon!” “Pastor, you really stepped on my toes. I like it when you make me squirm in my seat.” So go the comments to the typical preacher on a Sunday morning following the sermon. So, also, goes the dilemma faced by everyone who stands up to procl...

Last week, I heard a woman give a short testimony from a favorite passage of mine found in Jeremiah 20. In that passage, the prophet Jeremiah is weary. He’s been beaten (literally) by people he’d thought were his friends, betrayed by his own family and continually ridiculed for delivering a message that God had given him to deliver. He is wondering if it is worth speaking for God anymore, or if th...

Keep your heart with all diligence,For out of it spring the issues of life.Proverbs 4:23When a person looks to buy a new car, they generally notice the sound system, upholstery, or the way it looks. But, if you think about it, the engine is the most important feature of any car, because the moment the engine fails, the car is useless.Our hearts work the same way. In the long run, if you don’t guar...

Volunteers in the local church seem to be an endangered species. It is not as if this is a new problem, but is seems acute at this season in church ministry. The problem of staffing in businesses we observe is also echoed in non-profits and churches. I don’t have extensive qualitative data to prove my assumption. However, in early 2022, Christianity Today published an article about volunteer short...

The man behind the book of Ecclesiastes is one of the most intriguing in all of Scripture. He is a case study in one whose heart lost its heat for God throughout a lifetime. His life prompts me to ask, How do giants redwoods of the faith fall from grace? Recently, the Christian world was rocked with the scandal of Ravi Zachariah. His posthumous witness has all but eroded his character while tarrin...

If you listen to 40 years worth of sermons, you will have heard some 1600 Bible messages. I am assuming you will be attending an average of 40 Sunday mornings a year, and not 52, as few have perfect attendance. However, even if you attend 52 worship services a year, you will have sat through 2,080 sermons in 40 years. As the son of a Baptist preacher, I sat through many sermons as a child and yout...

The snow and ice are falling on a row of heavy-laden pines that border my property and a busy road next to my home. The beauty is portrait quality in HD, and I cannot look away. My mind wanders to distant memories of building snow forts with my sister and rolling snowmen with my children. The ice and snow-draped trees are breath-taking in the morning light. I wonder, how can something so beautiful...

Ecclesiastes: A Meaningful Book about Meaninglessness In his autobiographical book, A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean, writes his story of he and his brother growing up as sons of a Methodist clergymen in Prohibition Era Missoula, Montana. The men of the family were all fly-fisherman. The story is of tragedy and happiness between the brothers and their parents. At the end of the book, which ...

Triage is a necessity in the medical world; it is a matter of life and death. In the world of theology, it can also mean spiritual or physical life and death too. In the last post on this topic, we considered the importance of fleshing out the brilliant statement by Rupert Meldinius in the 17th Century about church cooperation. He wrote, “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all thi...

One of the stories that always captured me from the Bible is when Jesus and Peter walk on water together. It was a moment in time that both would never forget. As a child, I was spellbound when Jesus came walking out to the disciples on the stormy sea. My eyes widened as Peter asked Jesus if he could come out on the water and join them. The movement from tantalizing to terrifying did not take long...