Being a faithful churchgoer really shouldn’t be newsworthy, it seems to me, but there it was nonetheless—a story from the Reuters news service about an individual named Preta, a regular churchgoer in Sobrado, a town in northern Portugal.  Every Sunday for the past three years, it seems,  Preta has attended without fail the 7:30 a.m. [...]

I was there for its arrival the other day—minding my own business, waiting to cross the street from the office to the church—when it came through, all pomp and circumstance.  It was August in all its glory, leading a parade of vacation returnees, sweeping up the last vestiges of summer, while its loudspeaker blared news [...]

With the close of the 2010 session of the North Georgia Annual Conference, I have officially begun my sixth year as senior minister for Fayetteville First United Methodist Church.  It’s up to you to decide how many years it FEELS like at this point (Two?  Twenty?  Too many?), but the objective reality is we just [...]

Beginning somewhere around Memorial Day weekend, the cosmos experiences a slight hiccup in time (Can you tell I was a fan of Lost?).  Seconds click by at a slightly different pace, though that difference is perceptible only to the human heart.  And with that time shift everything changes, from our children’s play schedules to our [...]

Easter isn’t finished yet.  And, no, that isn’t just a preacher-trick to lure the masses back into church for one more big Sunday (It doesn’t work—I’ve tried).  It’s a simple truth of calendar and story.  In our Christian year, the SEASON of Easter doesn’t end until the MESSAGE of Easter is gloriously fulfilled on the [...]

You know you’re doing well as a church when other churches copy what you’re doing.  In fact, if anything is certain in the ecclesiastical circles, it’s that successful ministry will be duplicated sooner than later.
Using that simple standard, I want to congratulate our Kristin Heiden for her excellent work.  In her first year here, Kristin [...]

This column originally appeared in the March 3 North Georgia Christian Advocate.
 
The best teachers are highly portable; it’s amazing how far and long you can carry them with you.  Even now, after 25 years of ministry, Fred Craddock still stands watch as I attempt to patch together one more sermon, challenging every cheap shortcut.  Leonard [...]

They are the ghost towns of the web, thriving sites built with high hopes and aspirations, until eventually the mine petered out or the well went dry, and the founders floundered and moved on, leaving behind relics of old observations and clever thoughts sadly dated and dilapidated.  In other words, they became like the blog before [...]

We are almost there.  Just over that next hill is the stable, and in the stable the manger.  And for us in the church, of course, that manger is the heart of it all.  We’re almost there, but you still have time to finish your wish list.  Are you working on it?  Feel free to [...]

It is the question Fred Craddock said we preachers should write at the top of every page of our sermon notes, but today let’s put a bow on it, because it’s an awfully good question for this season, too.  For that matter, we could apply it to our relationship with God, our worship, our profession [...]