late night ramblings

It’s almost 1 am, and well my wife and I are arranging housing for one of our visiting congregations for this year’s Great Southwest Bible Bowl. I am looking forward to Saturday, and for the feeling of "whew," when the day is done. We have had a really good turn out year after year, and [...]

Check this out

Go on over to Houston Heflin’s blog. He has got some good stuff to read.

Thinking through Ecclesiastes 5:1-7

"Then the Lord called Samuel…" (1 Samuel 3:4)
 
A word from the Word: Read Ecclesiastes 5:1-7
"Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen…" (Eccl. 5:1)
 
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We are a culture of noise. Try to think of the last time that you disengaged from the world, on purpose, turned off the television, [...]

The commitment factor

I am finding that culturally, families are over committed. I know this isn’t any great revelation. Even in more rural areas families are busy and over extended. Our families in our churches are just as busy as non-church families. Part of our task as ministers and equipers is to help families balance their commitments and [...]

cold and icy

It’s been cold and icy here in Oklahoma. In my prayer for our Middle School class this morning, I mentioned us not being cold and icy in our relationships with others. We talked about how faith isn’t supposed to be vertical, but that there is a horizontal aspect to faith that many of us don’t [...]

ramblings on youth ministry

One of the hardest things I am learning in ministry is that you can’t please everyone. I know that far older, and far wiser friends and mentors have shared this insight before with me. But for some strange reason, I thought I could do it. I am officially done trying to please every one. I [...]

On spiritual formation

I appreciate the prayers and the encouragement I received from some dear friends. I know that life is caught between the now and the not yet, and it’s in that middle of time, the now that sometimes to cloud of my vision of the not yet. I am sure you can relate. Like all of [...]

rough road

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. At least most of the difficulty has been self-inflicted. Not guarding my lips from delivering harsh words, not guarding heart from letting anger and bitterness surface and explode. You know, I have been really trying to direct our kids to become more like Jesus. I believe this is [...]

busy week and then some

why is youth ministry so busy? i don’t mean to sound so naive, but could we do better jobs at delegating certain tasks and doing more ministry, better ministry? how are you doing at delegating?

Bedside prayers

Something marvelous happens to a father’s heart each night. I’ll kneel beside my oldest daughter’s bed and we begin to pray. She likes to pray. But I love to hear here pray on her own. She thanks God for everything that she can think of. For her friends at church, for chicken, for elmo, for [...]