Rest areas and my spirituality…

I think the idea of “resting in God’ is analogous to my experience of how a rest area works when my family traveled to Canada in the 80s and 90s. The distance between where we lived in Marietta, Georgia and my maternal grandmother’s place in Toronto was about 950 miles. Typically, it took anywhere between …

National Conference on Youth Ministries – Day 1

Yesterday the sessions started with an per-registration meeting with Patrick Mead that I missed (boo) but I decided to go to Agia Sophia's coffee shop (see yesterday's post). After that I did a little detour to visit a couple of places... Manitou Springs This is home of Pike's Peak Cog Railway which was, much to …

Trusting God after Newtown

I wasn't going to write about it as this blog post will surely become lost in the sea of characters of different people posting about different things in the wake of the deaths in Newtown, CO. Quite honestly it actually makes me nauseous and a little uneasy to try to reflect about what happened. Because …

How to not lose your sanity before church services on Sundays

I may be the only one who experiences this but our pre-church service routine on Sunday mornings is similar to battlefield scenarios in war situations. There are strategies to do just about everything that needs to get done. One of the following seems to happen to at least one of our children on Sunday mornings: …

Just Make the Stinking Coffee

“Now when the people complained, it displeased the LORD; for the LORD heard it, and His anger was aroused. So the fire of the LORD burned among them, and consumed some in the outskirts of the camp” (Numbers 11:1). I came to the office this morning and for the first time in a couple of …

Will the Real Church Please Stand Up? (Part 1)

I am afraid we have missed the boat on a lot of key things and as a result, our young people (teens and twenty-somethings) have become disenchanted with organized religion. Keep in mind that this is not indicative of every church context (I know...your church is always the exception right?) but ever since I became a member …

A Day in the Life of a Teenager 9 (The Pain They Endure) by Barry Throneberry

Does the Bible offer hope to teenagers who live with emotional and spiritual pain?  What about all the suffering that exists in the world today?  What can we do as Christians to help others through these tough times?  In this post I want to share with you a few different ways to explain to teens …

Getting the Old Skeletons Out

I went into my room last night and saw a small cassette tape on the table.  We are long past the age of cassette tapes so I was curious about this and I picked up and noticed that it was a sermon I preached while I was an intern at Washington Avenue church of Christ …

Christmas 1

The results of the poll are final and it looks like a total of 29 people voted and 65% of you believe that "Christmas", in some form or fashion, should be celebrated in our congregations.  That is a majority of you but there is a large amount (10 people) who believe Christmas should not be …

I’m so tired…

I believe the following phrase has hindered me from growing and excelling in ministry: "I wonder what ____________ will think about all of this." Admit it, in your own network of people you work with it is those words that keep you from doing something that you feel is right but you don't want to …