During the ministry of John Wesley (founder of the Methodist Church), many churches were led by lay preachers with limited education. On one occasion, one of these simple preachers was called on to preach from Luke 19:21, which reads in the King James, “Lord, I feared thee, because thou art an austere man.” Not knowing…

A woman in a Bible study I was leading once declared that the nearly fatal disease she’d been fighting was the best thing that had ever happened to her. What she meant was that her pain and fear had led her to the true source of healing and peace. As a result of her diagnosis,…

Charles Swindoll writes, “I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so, it is with each of us… we are in charge of our attitudes.” I came across a wonderful illustration of this that contains excerpts from the diary of a dog and…

Last weekend, we set our clocks ahead an hour to take advantage of Daylight Savings Time. I’ve never liked losing an hour of sleep, but I love the fact that the sun is now still shining at 7 pm and beyond! All this talk about time reminded me of an old song called “Living on…

God’s love for us is never changing. How much we grow in love and faith, however, is up to us. William Boggs once wrote, “For many of us, religion is like an artificial limb. It has neither warmth nor life, and though it helps us stumble along, it never becomes a part of us. We…

The snow just keeps coming! As I write this, we are expecting another big snowstorm on Tuesday night. My wife, Tammy, who has been teaching in the Midwest for many years, doesn’t remember a winter as bad as this one in terms of school cancelations. Unfortunately, many of the snowstorms we have had over the…

My parents recognized early on they needed to handle each of their children in very different ways. For me, one of the worst punishments was being sent to my room by myself. My sister, on the other hand, was a different story. As an introvert, the best discipline for her was to make her sit…

While the Super Bowl was being broadcast on Sunday evening, I was driving to Louisville, Kentucky for a meeting with other recipients of the Louisville Institute grant for pastoral study projects. My project won’t happen until next year around this time, but this is a required part of the process laid out by the Lilly…

Years ago, in the Soviet Union, the Communist party tried to eradicate religious belief – with no success. If they’d paid attention to history, they would’ve known that persecution just makes the Church stronger. Their other mistake was that they severely underestimated the faith of their own people, especially the babushkas (or grandmothers). One Sunday…

I recently heard a story about a church that was looking for a new pastor. The leaders of the church sat down with their regional minister and she asked them what they wanted in their new pastor. “Someone who can attract young families,” they all agreed. The regional minister asked, “What is it about your…