Last week I found myself on a mountain in Daytona FL. If you know anything about Daytona, that might sound like a strange statement. So let me explain. Last week I was at the Pastors’ Conference for the Florida Georgia District of the LCMS, me and some 200 of my fellow pastors got together for continuing…

I have a guy in Costa Rica. That’s kind of a fun thing to say, right? Well, you’re going to get to say it too. I’ve been talking with Drew Boggs. He is my guy in Costa Rica. He is in Costa Rica because he is helping do mission work in that area. Drew is…

Paul, writing to probably-not-his-favorite-church, Corinth, writes “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” (2 Corinthians 4) Corinth was a hard church to work with. Paul’s earliest letter was the first letter to the Corinthians, a letter which it seemed he felt he…

This past summer, at our Florida Georgia District convention, we passed a few “resolutions”. Those are basically things that we agree to do together as this grouping of churches from the mountains of Georgia all the way down to the beaches of the Bahamas. One of those resolutions impacts our local church. It is a…

The other day I found myself in a space where people were mentioning somewhat obscure things from the Bible. Some people might call those things “trivia”. It was things like “was it Elijah or Elisha that was fed by ravens by the Kerith Brook?” (It was Elijah, by the way), and things like “which Israelite…

Over the 18 years I’ve been a pastor, when I ask people what their “next step” in terms of faith is, I usually get one of two answers: Answer 1: I want to pray more/better. Answer 2: I want to read the Bible more/better. Prayer is a great thing to want to do more and/or…

“The B-I-B-L-E, yes that’s the book for me, I stand alone on the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E.” Depending on your level Sunday School education, that song might give you flashbacks, or maybe even a little tick, or maybe I’ve just put an earworm into your head for the rest of the day. That earworm…

James Kimmel Jr (not the “Jimmy” of late night fame) spent years researching something that might feel natural to us, revenge. In his study of revenge he found that “grievances,” his umbrella term for things like real or imagined slights, injustices, betrayals, or victimizations, these grievances make our brains respond in a way that is…

This week ends my sabbatical. I’ll be back in the office on Friday, back in the pulpit on Sunday. It has been good. I am very thankful for the time that I have had in this “sabbath” experience, but God’s design for the world was not 7 days of sabbath, but one day of sabbath…