Economic Issues and Incomplete Answers

It’s July 4th and all’s well—I guess.   I don’t want to give a hearty amen to this statement because I have been reading Business Week.  So many questions, yet so many incomplete or less-than-hearty answers.
Have you noticed the lack of commitment by all the business experts?  Here’s an example, “All this austerity will pay off—eventually.”  [...]

Sullenberger and Flight 1549—Prefiguring Christ

We raptly sat in front of the TV Sunday night watching the 60 Minutes story on the miracle on the Hudson River, Flight 1549.  Captain Sullenberger recounted, almost second by second, the drama of losing the engines on his jet and the quick decisions that led to the hard, but safe, landing in the water [...]

Discovering God’s Will: A First Step

How has God been at work in your life? We spend time reading Scripture, praying, rendering acts of worship, but we tend to treat these discrete passages of time as separate events.  There is a tendency to say that God is in each of these moments and then we work ourselves up emotionally, and these [...]

Obama and McCain Going Public with Their Giving: Observations for the Next Generation

By now you are probably aware that both Barack Obama and John McCain have posted prior year personal tax returns on their respective websites for public inspection. Public officials being public about private financial matters merit some positive and public praise. But let’s be careful as we scrutinize the candidates’ charitable giving.
Yes, we see that [...]

Narcissism and God’s Will Don’t Mix

It is heartening to see the number of churches today that offer enriching courses to their members. The courses cover the gamut of biblical topics. At my own church it is always interesting to see which classes fill up the quickest, perhaps as a commentary on where the heart of the church is [...]

My First Capital Campaign

My wife Lisa and I learned an important lesson early in our married life about stewardship. We lived in a great community and were members of a great church. The preaching was good, the Bible lessons were good, the people were good, and most importantly, the food was good. Every time we [...]

Reflecting on Declines in Giving to Religion

By far, the largest amount of charitable giving in the United States on a year-by-year basis is to religious causes. So, should we be concerned if we see shifts in certain factors surrounding this area of philanthropy?
Maybe so. The alarm sounded with the recent release of a study by the Indiana University Center [...]

Google-ing John 3:16

You all have felt it. It was just a matter of time. Years of surfing the internet has finally caught up with us. Yes, I am talking about the effect of spending massive, cumulative amounts of time online on our brains.
For me, I can think back into the 1990s at some point [...]

Lessons Learned from a VW

Back in the early 1980s Lisa and I moved to Tallahassee, Florida so that I could attend graduate school at Florida State (Go ‘Noles!). This was less than a year after we were married and it was a time we learned a great lesson about how the Lord provides. We had packed our [...]