Last week I went to court. To testify as a character witness for Jamie. This week I went to jail. To pray with Jamie. Though many were praying for him, the trial didn’t go well. He got thirty years – without parole. I think I felt almost as bad about it as he did. He’d […]

Painting courtesy of Nathan Greene, artist Richard Kirkland was just 18 when he enlisted as a Confederate soldier to fight in the American Civil War in 1862. On December 13 of that year, his unit was engaged in heavy battle with the Union army near Fredericksburg, VA. The Confederates had built a low stone wall […]

I’m not sure how to explain this, but let me try. We handed out at church this little card (see a copy at the top). It’s about 2 1/2 inches square and it has some numbers and a big check mark on the front. We were fearful it might be received as a kind of […]

Not many pastors build great churches but great churches build great pastors. I love to bask in that truth. Nearly every pastor I know can look back over their years of service and say something like, “I remember when I went to Judith Gap, MT. It was my second church and I went there with […]

Several years ago Ruthie and I were in Europe; France actually. We ended up with part of a day free so we rented a car and drove (on the wrong side of the road) out to an area of the world that had been a familiar part of our vocabulary a few years earlier. World […]

We have a friend who is an evangelist. I don’t mean a sneak-up-after-dark-and-slip-a-pamphlet-under-your-doormat kind of evangelist. I mean the real thing. He sends out “handbills” by the thousands and invites people to his church to hear him preach the gospel. That kind of evangelist. People come to hear; and they accept Jesus and become part […]

Ruthie and I know the lady whose story I want to tell you, so I know it’s true… There’s this school. High school. Down town. Less than 500 miles from where we live. Nine of the girls, ages 14, 15, and 16, are pregnant. The mother of one of them asked our friend if she […]

Ruthie and I have a friend who is a nurse. Not a bed-side nurse, you understand. She’s the kind of nurse who gives physicals, blood tests, and other procedures when people are seeking specific jobs where health issues are important. She meets some very interesting folks. She (Arlene) herself grew up in a Christian church, […]

There aren’t many templates in Scripture on how to pray. But there are examples and dramatic narratives. And it’s there, in those stories, that we get the best instruction, the best tutoring on how God wants His people to pray. A short time after Jesus returns to heaven the new church is still in trouble […]

End of the month and Paul and his wife were working on their bills. When they came to the item of tuition for the kids who attend a local Christian school, Paul decided he would just drop by the school and leave the check. It was raining hard, but he knew the school liked to […]