Welcome to life as a deacon! Always exciting, inspiring, fulfilling and self-satisfying. Wait… that’s not exactly true. Let’s start over. Welcome to life as a deacon! Much different than you expected (that’s a little closer to the truth). As you begin your ministry as a deacon, here are a few common errors to avoid for the sake of…
He’s Everything from A to Z
AUTHOR of my everything, my story A to Z BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR above, my blinded eyes can see COMFORTER of weary souls, COMPANION of the lost DELIVERER, DEFENDER despite the cruel cost EXALTED ONE who stooped to save, found in a humble place FAITHFUL ONE of Glory who came to me in grace GUARDIAN…
Worst Day Ever
It happened at the start of my first year of junior high school. My dad got a new job in another state and so the week before school started, we were moving. The great thing about this move was that in the middle of the chaos, I was shuffled off to my grandparents so far…
I miss her.
Do you remember her? Our rhetoric was imperfect, but there were guardrails in the grooves of our brain that kept us from the dregs of profanity. Do you remember the America where leaders respected each other, in spite their differences? I miss the trust that people had in each other’s decency, when we bolstered our…
5 Easy Ways to Share Your Faith
“I hear what you’re saying about sharing my faith but I have an allergic reaction to it, I break out in a cold sweat when I even think about prying my way into somebody’s eternal destiny and trying to get them to do what they need to do.” For many believers, the term “evangelism” evokes…
Animal Prayer
Lord, I ask that Thou giveth me: the strength of the elephant and the lightness of a butterfly the patience of a snail and the speed of a jaguar the playfulness of a monkey and the stubborn faithful plodding of an ass the eyes of an eagle and the discernment of a bat the roar…
The Big Story
We were born with a deep sense of eternity. It’s inside us It’s echoes through our doubts and struggles for meaning and hope But we must ask… IS this life all that there really is? Or are we shaped and formed by a living God There’s too much beauty, too much wonder, too much extravagance…
Lamentations Before Sunrise
We are all unwilling recluses. We know the trifles of distraction that pull us away from the tethers of reality In the morning, we wake from restless sleep and fearful understanding the darkness covers and we cry in the GethseMany of our aloneness. And we taste the same legions of despair. There will be a…
Forgiveness is More about You Than Them
All was well in the Amish community in Lancaster Pennsylvania until a deranged man mercilessly shot 10 Amish girls and then turned the gun on himself in 2006. How did they respond to this shocking loss? Amazingly, the Amish community didn’t blame. Instead, they reached out with grace and compassion toward the killer’s family. They…
He was Mary’s Boy
We are all connected through mothers- somehow, some way. Jesus was no different in that way. It all began with an angelic message. “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He…