As a lot of you know, I write these sermons eight weeks out. When I finish writing one, I put it in my “Sermons In Progress” file and then essentially don’t look at it again until the Monday before I am to preach it the following Sunday. So for “Human Nature,” I wrote it in Read the full article…

During a hospital visit some time ago, a young woman said quietly to me, “I like the church because there are all different races there. I wouldn’t want to go to a church that was just all white or all black.” Music to my ears, of course. And then she said something that has layered Read the full article…

As I posted last week, my friend and colleague James-Michael Smith is leading “Let’s Talk About Sex,” a four week class on developing a mature, biblical sexual ethic. Last night’s session focused on The Song Of Songs and was titled, appropriately enough, Hot Bible Sex. A literal rendering of the name of that Old Testament erotic Read the full article…

Many if not most of you have never heard of Mike Campbell, who is the lead guitarist of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. He didn’t play The Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock like Jimi Hendrix. He didn’t play the mind-bending solo on Heartbreaker like Jimmy Page. No one ever called him “god” as they did Eric Clapton. Read the full article…

How to motivate a church to be radically generous? How to inspire people to pick up and then fill up thousands of shoe boxes with Operation Christmas Child? How to put in “only human” language the idea of “to whom much is given, much is required”? Those question were in my mind in conceiving and Read the full article…