Author page: davegipson@hotmail.com

Anyone who knows me knows I have a great fondness for musicals. They were a source of joy and escape throughout a fairly tough childhood.  However…I don’t like all musicals.  For instance, I specifically like shows that are optimistic and full of life and joy.  I like plots about how people are basically the same…

A friend reposted a question on her Facebook page from John Tesh's radio show. The puffy-haired spokesman, best known for his stint on Entertainment Tonight, asked: “When you get to heaven, who are you going to look for first?” The answers were probably what you’d expect. There were about 100 “mommas” Lots of deceased…

Watch Dave preach at the Naples Gathering from Sunday, July 25.

When I was a kid, I loved the little label gun my mom had. It had plastic tape you inserted in the gun, and then you typed the words you wanted printed. Then peel the back off the tape and stick wherever needed. Except where’s the fun in only putting labels where needed? Childhood Dave…

Too often, my life has been like a broken washing machine. I keep “repeating the cycle”. Hindsight is 20/20, they say. Sometimes I wish it were a little more hazy. I've worked lots of jobs through the years, many times serving in churches. Though I never did anything illegal, I did behave in ways early…

The lady was in her 90s, seated by a window with a spectacular view of the golf course landscaping outside. She had been an artist, and her oil paintings decorated many of the walls around us. Her condo was not elaborate but tastefully decorated. I guess that’s what you’d expect from an artist. “I didn’t…

My baby girl Sarah got married last week. And honestly, I didn’t really feel anything. Until today. I arrived in town on Thursday, my wife had been there with our two little adopted girls since that Monday earlier. The man Sarah’s marrying already had a 3 year old girl and a 2 year old boy…

Hello, dear reader. Your arrival here is actually very timely. I’ve got some thoughts I’d love to share with you right now… But I can’t. Really, I can’t. I can’t because I’m seriously afraid. I’m fearful of what your response will be, because for the first time in my life I feel that writing a…

You remember the dumbest things from childhood. Mine was a PE coach. Not that she was dumb, but that she did something completely innocuous that emotionally destroyed me one day. I was maybe in third or fourth grade, standing in a line to come in from the playground. I suppose the PE teacher had said…

October is officially Pastor Appreciation month at most churches. But I don’t think it’s coincidence it falls in the same month as Halloween... ...because being a pastor is scary business. relative of mine goes to a church that’s really been struggling in recent years. Once thriving, now it’s all they can do to keep the…

If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, in which you trusted, they wearied you, then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan? For even your brothers, the house of your father, even they…

Growing up in a southern church, every Easter there was one hymn you had to sing: a waltzy little ditty called “He Lives”. At the end of the chorus we’d all exclaim, “You ask me how I know He lives - He lives within my heart!” As I entered my college years, that explanation ceased to satisfy…