Heaven: How do you imagine it?

What is heaven like?We all have our ideas.  What are yours?
Sometimes I speak before I think.  Sometimes this happens when I’m preaching. Ordinarily I’ve got a pretty strict plan for my message, but it is not unusual for me to let something sneak in at  the last minute.
A couple of Sundays ago I opened my [...]

Reflection on 8 years ago

I remember numbly sitting and watching the video loops over and over again.  It was beyond my ability to keep from wondering how the twin towers actually falling might have compared with Hollywood’s CGI version of the same event.
Thoughts cascaded from my head to my heart about the bigger picture – what might the events [...]

Keys to Negotiation

I expect someone smarter than I am has at one point suggested that all communication, all relationships, are matters of negotiation. In June’s issue of INC. magazine, Norm Brodsky offers advice for negotiation in his Street Smarts column. The online version is titled: When Negotiating, Always Listen Before You Speak.
Here are his two points:

You simply [...]

You have to be Rich to be Poor

If you think the poor just need to work harder, this fine article by DeNeen L. Brown shows many ways that the poor have to work harder just to keep up, let alone to try and get ahead.  HT Alan Hitt.
Here’s the opening:
You have to be rich to be poor.
That’s what some people who have [...]

Time flies

It is hard to believe, but 20 years ago this month I graduated from Asbury Theological Seminary.
Besides the move from Wilmore back to Texas, I have moved 7 times in those 20 years, serving 7 different churches, two campus ministries, and one children’s home. I have grown in ways I would not have, perhaps could [...]

Old Enough to Drink?

A collection of over 100 college presidents are lobbying congress to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.
Their reasoning is that binge drinking “has become a significant health issue.” Binge drinking is exacerbated by the difficulty students under 21 have in getting access to alcohol. Removing the “forbideen Fruit” mystique from [...]

Old Thought, New Expression

One of those things I first thought at least a decade ago finds expression in the printed word:
The idea of God as  a being who is unchanging, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent and thus always right is more of a philosophical rendering than a biblical one. In metaphysical theology God is thought to be the perfect [...]

Truth

Jack Nicholson was probably right. Tom Cruise couldn’t handle the truth.
Can you? Can I? Can we?
Claims about truth get thrown around like scud missiles.
Some in the church lament the loss of the day when we believed there was absolute truth (or should I say “Absolute Truth”) and that we (the church) had it.
Some [...]

Goods and Problems

My father-in-law sent me this article from the Boston Globe.  Here is the key paragraph, at least by my judgment:
Poverty and wealth, by this logic, don’t just fall along a continuum the way hot and cold or short and tall do. They are instead fundamentally different experiences, each working on the human psyche in its [...]

Top Ten

A good friend and colleague asked me for my “top ten books for youth ministry or personal top ten.”
Here’s what I told him:

Christianity for the Rest of Us, by Diana Butler-Bass
Practicing Passion, by Kenda Creasy Dean
Politics of Jesus, by John Howard Yoder
Soul Searching, by Christian Smith and Melinda Denton
Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, by Andrew Root
Postmodern [...]