You don’t have to look far into Martin Luther’s story to see that he was considered an “outlaw” in his day, often literally. He was wanted for arrest He lived under an assumed name. He wrote scandalous things about the ruling authorities. He was an outlaw. That shouldn’t surprise us much. Moses was an outlaw.…
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Church Blog (Page 30)
I’m going to say something that is probably going to make me unpopular with some people. That’s fine. Here’s the thing that I’m going to say: You shall have no other gods before me. What does this mean? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. By the way, that “all things”…
This past week I was able to attend the first ever online conference put on by our FLGA District. It was pretty good. I have some good notes in my notebook. One of the keynote speakers for the conference was David Kinnaman, the current leader of Barna Research, a research group that polls about Christian and…
My friend Rev. Timothy J. Hartner, a prince of a pastor who is now retired from his labors at St. Paul’s Weston, FL, shared his work on “lament” recently with me, what follows is my take on what he shared. We have much to lament over in 2020: deaths, illness, racial discord, political discord, loss…
If you’ve ever done any coaching with me, especially around something that it seems like you just can’t get yourself to get done, it’s likely that I have told you about the CANE model of motivation (that stands for Commitment And Necessary Effort model). The CANE model starts with the assumption that if you are…
Parables are one of the eccentricities of Jesus. He told them seemingly all the time and we love them. The word “parable” literally means “thrown alongside” (para = alongside + ballein = thrown). It’s a story or an image that is “thrown alongside” a heavenly truth that helps us to see the contours of the…
I was the only bartender in the bar that night and we had run out of limes. It was easy enough for me to tell the guys who were pounding the Coronas (so therefore the limes as well) that we had run out of limes, but that would mean that they would shuffle off to…
The French artist known only as “JR” is semi-famous for a self-portrait. The full title of the work is “Self-Portrait in a Woman’s Eye, Kenya, from 28 Milimetres, Women are Heroes , 2010”. The portrait at first appears to be a close up of someone’s eye, but as you look closer, you find the reflection…
What are you hungry for? I’ve always thought that was a weird little question. I mean, at some level, being hungry is not a discriminating thing. If you’re really hungry, you’ll be willing to consider a lot of things you otherwise wouldn’t consider. But there is also a reality to being “hungry for”. Sometimes our hungers…
At the end of the 2005 movie, “Smoke” starring Harvey Keitel, he tells a story about chasing down a kid who was shoplifting in his store. The kid drops his wallet but gets away from Auggie (Keitel’s character). Auggie, then decided to take the wallet home but doesn’t do anything with it for a while.…