Promoting Marriage As Community Care

Churches can care for their communities by providing resources to encourage and strengthen marriage. The Brookings Institute’s Ron Haskins writes — “Higher marriage rates among the poor would benefit poor adults themselves, their children, and the nation.”  Haskins believes that churches and other non-profits should encourage marriage by offering courses on marriage, parenting, money management, [...]

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Sermon for Advent: God Keeps A Promise

God Keeps A Promise Jeremiah 33:14-16 NIV 14 ” ‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. 15 ” ‘In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; [...]

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Back from the farm

Debbie and I just got back from Thanksgiving with our daughter Amy, her husband Randy, and our grandson Wesley at their farm in Santa Fe, Tennessee. They live out in the country in the rolling hills of south central Tennessee, and do not have cell phone service or internet access at their farm.  So I [...]

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Sermon: I Believe in The Life Everlasting

I Believe in the Life Everlasting John 6:53-68 NIV 53Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at [...]

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Zondervan Models Repentance, Humility By Pulling Controversial Book

Zondervan Publishing announced yesterday that it is pulling all the copies and support material for its controversial Deadly Viper Character Assassins book.   Dr. Soong-Chan Rah and others in the Asian-American Christian community pointed out the culturally offensive title and content of the book to the authors and to Zondervan Publishing. The company listened, and [...]

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Silly Titles For Serious Topics

Is it just me, or has anybody else noticed how silly Christian book titles have become?  Zondervan is in a dust-up with Soong-Chan Rah and other Asian-American church leaders over the book Deadly Viper Character Assassins: A Kung Fu Survival Guide for Life and Leadership.  Dr. Rah’s beef, and rightly so, is with the cultural [...]

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A Non-Conference Worth Noting

The Deeper Church Non-Conference sponsored by missonalcommons.org is worth noting.  As a rule I do not promote conferences and seminars on my blog — except the ones I speak at, of course, which is shameless self-promotion I admit.   There are just too many conferences and most of them cost a small fortune.  But these [...]

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Finding Our Place Among The Hungry

More world citizens and more Americans go hungry each day than ever before in the history of the world.  One billion people out of the 6-billion who inhabit the earth, do not have enough to eat.  Almost 17% of the world’s population — 1-in-6 people in other words — are undernourished or malnourished. In the [...]

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Sermon: I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body

I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body I Corinthians 15:35-44 35But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just [...]

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Unplugged the cable again

About 3 years ago, Debbie and I unplugged the cable TV and stashed our 27″ big black box behind an upstairs couch.  And we went cable-less for almost 18-months.  Then the presidential election came along, and we turned it back on last fall.  Yesterday I turned in the cable box and we’re TV-less again. Actually, [...]

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