In a magazine for pastors [Pulpit Helps, August 1997], one fellow wrote with one of those “you know you’re in trouble when …” lists. This one is, of course, addressed to preachers and is called “So Long, Pastor” You Know It’s Over When … You return from vacation to find the visiting preacher’s name in […]
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his […]
Sometimes, when I look back at my time in the parish, I feel for my congregation members. My parents raised me with the idea that “good enough” was unacceptable. Complacency is “as soon as you are comfortable with where you are, you are heading in the wrong direction.” The Signs of Complacency. 1) Satisfaction with […]
23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as […]
One question I love to ask guests on my podcast is: “What do you want your legacy to be?” The illustration below shows what happens when your answer goes astray. A young man was to be sentenced to the penitentiary. The judge had known him from childhood, for he was well acquainted with his father—a […]
When I talked to a few frustrated rural pastors, at the heart of their frustration was the sense that because there was not a large influx of people coming into their community, there were not many ministries to do. What is needed is an attitude adjustment. Sometimes out of our most desperate situations comes the […]
Former heavyweight boxer James (Quick) Tillis is a cowboy from Oklahoma who fought out of Chicago in the early 1980s. He still remembers his first day in the Windy City after his arrival from Tulsa. “I got off the bus with two cardboard suitcases under my arms in downtown Chicago and stopped in front of […]
This story is familiar. In 1972, and after 308 years, the First Church of Newton, Mass., called it quits. It gave its assets to a museum, sold its building to a Greek Evangelical Church, and disbanded. Started in 1664, the church rose to a high of 1,200 members in 1952 but dropped to 325 in […]
The press reported a heart-rending story, telling of a young father who shot himself in a telephone booth. James Lee had called a Chicago newspaper and told a reporter he had sent the paper a manila envelope containing the story of his suicide. The reporter traced the call, but it was too late! When the […]
In the first century, Rome executed criminals by crucifixion. It was a humiliating and agonizing experience. There was no concept of death with dignity for the guilty. According to “Roman Antiquities”, after a man was sentenced to die, he was stripped of his clothes and paraded through the streets of the city, so that his […]
