Tonight, we are starting the St. Joseph Novena ... our request is that St. Joseph help us discern God's will ... whether to stay in Virginia or go back to Colorado, where to work, and other family intentions. Please pray this novena with us -- starting tonight -- and ending on the 9th day, March 19t...

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have little patience for attempting to run churches by business principles. That’s been weighed in the scale and found wanting every time it’s been attempted. Last evening, as I was prepping for an interview I was to conduct with a supply chain exp...

by Dan Phillips ...these are pretty amazing: Now, I think the first is clearly faked, and one or two others are iffy. But the rest? If they're fake, they're fooling me. Even if they're all fake, we know that athletes pour incredible focus and discipline into what they do. Their whole life is molded ...

When I began to write this post, I looked for a dozen passages in the Scriptures that Christians in the West largely ignored in practice, despite mentally assenting to the truths contained therein. But what scared me as I delved into this was that far too many passages of the Scriptures are simply i...

This is the final section from Straight Up regarding The Gift of Discernment Used in the Flesh Not listening: I have learned a lot from listening to even the harshest of comments this past week. I learned that there is debate about the term Arab Christians use for Jesus of which I was not aware. I l...

This is part 2 of excerpts from James McDonald's article at the Straight Up blog regarding The Gift of Discernment Used in the Flesh “The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God� (James 1:20). Righteous anger directed against specific sin and toward a solution is needed and produc...

"Many of them just copy a letter from Rick Warren's book and send it out" was the summary sentence one pastor gave me when asked about church starts in his metropolitan area. Yes, he did mention some exceptions that are thriving. Those words set me to reflecting. Last Sunday in our Sun...

Today’s Gospel (Mark 8,22-26) tells the story of Jesus healing a blind man. He takes him outside of the town, and it takes 2 passes before the man sees clearly. Then Jesus tells him to “Go home. Don’t even go into the village.” It seems that Jesus has had to touch my eyes mor...

I like LifeWay Christian Stores pretty well; run by our Southern Baptist friends, LifeWay promotes a decent amount of good stuff book-wise; unlike Family Bookstores, where I’d be thrilled to toss maybe 70% of its products in the garbage bin (and I’m being charitable using that figger), I...

On my principle of never wasting a piece of writing, here's this month's attempt for the church magazine. ==== The other day I heard someone quote the text 'Judge not lest ye be judged' in a way that seemed to imply something along the lines of 'Don't disagree with my beliefs and I won't disagree wi...