Don’t you love that headline? It has a perfect appeal. It makes some people think that a pastor is flying in the face of religion. It makes some people happy that someone is finally speaking truth. It makes some people terrified that yet another pastor has gone over to the other side. ThatR...

(I gotta work on the titles. People will think this is about being intentional about building relationships. Ah well.) Yesterday I described my morning hour. I had several comments (okay, four  can be several). I didn’t get to them. So this morning my list included “replying to comments...

I set our alarm for 6. I usually get up. In fact, even when I don’t set our alarm for 6, I still wake up. I started doing this several months ago. I wanted to read. I wanted to write. I wanted to learn to use time to influence lives. And so I get up at 6. Sometimes, I talk about that itself as...

Last fall, when I started learning about deliberate practice,  I wanted to read Outliers. I wanted to read Talent is Overrated. I went to Borders, armed with a coupon to buy one of them. I looked first for Outliers, having heard more about Malcolm Gladwell than Geoff Colvin. If I was going to read ...

I’m sitting in a corner trying to work. Two feet from me, three workers from a fast food chain are working through a list of agenda items. They are making enough noise so that the conversation between a friend and a sales person is being blocked out. And the people doing some kind of employmen...

I stood at the free throw line, close to tears. All it was going to take was a couple dribbles and then a shot. And for a moment, I just couldn’t do it. I wish that I was talking about some grades school experience. But I’m not. That little experience happened this week. I was standing i...

Why did people invite Jesus to parties? It’s been a question I’ve wrestled with for awhile (even here), ever since I stopped to think about how often Jesus was at parties. His first miracle was at a wedding. Matthew gets invited to be a follower and throws a party, complete with sinners ...

1. If you stopped by here last Friday, you know that I wrote about sitting in a college orientation session. I wrote about it from a different perspective today at gnmparents.com. Here’s a sample: College won’t start for six months or so, but I’m still feeling a little melancholy. The spea...

Thinking about being helpful. 1. I got an email today about a post I wrote on Monday. I talked about making calendars. I gave a sample calendar page to play with. I asked for feedback. Even as I was writing that post, I thought, “I’m assuming a lot of knowledge.” And my friend wrot...

For the past eight years, almost every month I’ve walked into a board meeting carrying a sheet with numbers on it. The numbers reflect the previous month’s income and expense. Most months the news has been marginal. Non-profits are frequently no profits, and because giving to churches an...