My girls are taking swimming lessons now. One has almost perform form on her strokes. Watching her swim is a thing of beauty.
But the other one? She flails about like a goose trying to take off. Her arms flap on top of the water like a basset hound’s oversized ears.
Does watching her give…
Most of us know worship from the church we grew up in, and I’m no exception. I remember the Organ prelude, the Call to Worship by the choir, the hymns, the Welcome (turn around and shake hands with people like you care). There was some sort of choir anthem and a solo we called the…
In 2023, may God disrupt your comfort, answer prayers you've long ago forgotten, and take you on the ride of your life!
Dave’s sermon DISRUPTION, recorded live on January 1 at NNBC…
When we moved into our new home in Florida last year, I noticed something that looked like a doorbell on two of our door frames. Later when my girls were watching the musical Fiddler On The Roof with me, I suddenly realized what they were.
“Do you see those little rectangular boxes on the top…
If Christianity is so wonderful, why are some Christians such jerks?
Good question.
I know people who’ve been put off from Christianity mainly because of some “Christians” they’ve met.
They see people say really dumb things and attribute it to their Christian faith.
They watch believers being hateful toward someone who believes differently from them.…
Dear victims,
You need to understand something about the pain you are feeling. Someone has hurt you, misused you, or abused you. You are right to feel wounded, and I'm sincerely grieved for what has happened to you.
However, there is great danger in those wounds you're nursing right now. Sometimes the pity and sympathy…
One day recently, I was in my office at church when a ministry friend stopped by at the door to chat.
As we talked through the joys and pains of ministry, she reminisced about a particularly tough time in her husband's pastorate. After decades of faithful service to a congregation, some power brokers within their…
We pray for our lives to go smoothly. We beg God to stay with our plan and keep to our schedule. But sometimes God wants our plans to fall apart so His plan can go into action.
When I lead a worship service, I plan every detail out specifically. I respect people’s time, so I…
My mom has always been a source of gentle humor in our family. Whenever she got amazed or exasperated by something, Mom would try to say, “Well …” — probably meaning to eventually say “well, I never.”
Instead, all that came out was a “wuh” noise. Then she would say it repeatedly, in a sort…
"You ask me if we will know each other in heaven. My friend, we will not really know each other UNTIL heaven!"
So as the joke goes, “A baptist pastor dies and goes to heaven…”
But inevitably the day finally came that I did. Right now, I’m standing by a roadside. But I don’t…
I was sitting in a sanctuary of around 1500 people that Sunday morning. But I felt completely alone.
We had just been through a whirlwind of death and then disappointment the previous year. Now we were in-between where we had been and where we were going. And we had no idea where that was. …
I was browsing through local church websites the other day, looking at their statements of faith. That’s basically a list of what they believe. Most had predictable statements about believing in one God, Jesus is His Son, and the Bible is God’s Word, etc. You know, traditional Christian theology.
But I did stumble upon one church that…