How Important is Christian Hospitality?

Perhaps you’ve noticed, our culture is often evaluating church in a negative fashion.  Church people are perceived as being hypocritical, looking very different in life expression than the claims from faith identity.  And, in a related way, the church message is received as irrelevant, out of touch with the reality of how faith intersects […]

Church in the Post-Pandemic World

The other day, ECG Partner Scott Musselman shot me a note about something I’d written that referenced the post-pandemic church. He said that his church wasn’t post-pandemic yet! And of course he’s completely correct – the Great Pandemic of 2020 hasn’t given up its ghost and doesn’t seem like it will any time soon. […]

Go for the Gold

This week, thousands of people have gathered in Tokyo and millions of others from around the world will watch great athletes from over 200 countries compete for gold medals in the Olympic games. Years of hard work, dedication, and desire are put to the ultimate test in the Summer Olympics.

Imagine if you saw […]

How to Pray When God Can’t Keep Your Attention

I was recently interviewed by Janelle Dixon about my book Prayer for People Who Can’t Sit Still. This is the article she wrote …

I was not blessed with a quiet mind. It’s a switchboard of
extemporaneous ideas, thoughts, memories and questions that is always on,
always lit up, always busy. Did I plug in the […]

Anti-Terrorism Prescription

My wife (Dr. Kris T-B) and I go on a date on as many Fridays as possible. On our dates we go to lunch and catch a movie matinee. Last week we went to see Joyful Noise, which was a good movie and showed the church and the faith in a positive light (for […]

The Power of Choice

I just finished reading a book synopsis on a flight to the deep South. Sheena Ivengar’s Art of Choosing provided me some grist to grind as I secret-shopped a mid-sized church in Texas (with an average worship attendance of around 300). Although this church hosted both traditional and contemporary worship services, I noticed in both […]

Aftershock

I just finished reading Aftershock by Wiedemer and Spitzer. In this book, they lay out the next global financial meltdown and what to do about it. They show how disastrously the bubbles will burst, causing chaos and panic in all areas of life.  They go so far as to say “The party is coming to […]

Christmas Tree Lights – a Fun Fundraiser

I posted most of this post last year, but the program is so effective i thought I would elaborate on it and share it again.

Hey folks, here is a way to raise additional funds at Christmas for some of those projects that you can’t afford.

When I was pastoring, every year we did a program […]

The Discovery Bible Study Questions Revised

Years ago, I was trained in house church leadership by one of the nation’s top gurus Neil Cole. I took the opportunity to shadow him for several days and learned a lot about time management, house church, leadership, and group led Bible studies. At the time he was using the Discovery Questions, six questions […]