Ten years ago, Rick Warren’s son, Matthew, ended his life with a self-inflicted gunshot. Author of one of the bestselling books of all time, The Purpose Driven Life, with more than twenty million copies sold worldwide, Rick Warren and his wife, Kay, have been open about their grief and the l…
Surveys suggest that if you’re like most folks, vacation Bible school has touched your life at some point.
My wife loves cooking. When we take road trips, she passes the time by reading cookbooks. When browsing the TV, she usually settles on a cooking show. Any cooking show, it seems to me. When we watch “Jeopardy” and they introduce a food category, she usually knows the answer. When I get stump…
The Foursquare Gospel movement may be the youngest successful denomination in America. One hundred years ago, it was founded by a woman evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson. Its distinctive symbol includes “the cross, the crown, the dove and the cup,” which are positioned at the four corners o…
This week, we’ll revisit the ways churches can merge successfully, consider the model of marriage for joining disparate congregations and add in a brand-new word that hails back to the Reformation.
They call it March Madness. For the next three weeks, the best college basketball teams in the nation will compete against one another. Every game is elimination, win or go home. There are markers along the way: Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, the Final Four and, eventually the championship game…
When my mother was 87, she called to ask my opinion about some counsel she had received from some well-meaning Christian friends. They told her that the devil was always present, always beside her, always trying to make her fall. Near the point of tears, she asked if that was true. A widow f…
After two decades of Our Faith columns, well over one thousand and counting, you might not expect to find something completely different in this space this week.
Those who minister for God to us often don’t mean to. The disciples were mostly fisherfolk, with one former tax collector for good measure. The Rev. Pierce Eaton, the new pastor of Texas City’s First Baptist Church, also once had a very different business plan in mind for his life.
My wife and I slipped into our seats at the theater last Thursday to view the opening of “The Jesus Revolution,” the movie just released portraying the Jesus Movement of the 1970s. It brought back memories.
Christianity is often thought of as occurring in two forms: Protestant and Catholic, but there’s always been a third way — one which claims to be the oldest and only ‘Apostolic church.’ The Orthodox churches (Russian, Syrian and Greek — a total of 15 self-governing patriarchies) make these b…
No one knows what you know. And everyone else you meet knows things you don’t. Even though my wife and I have been married more than 50 years, we each know things the other doesn’t.
Every once in a while, a book comes along that stops you in your tracks. A story that challenges all previous assumptions. Over the holidays, I read such a book, “Once You See: Seven Temptations of the Western Church,” a book written by Jeff Christopherson. It is a novel, Jeff’s second work …
The Reverends Quinn and Amy Peters have been to Europe and Hawaii. They’ve ministered at locations elsewhere in Texas. But now he has elected to invest his efforts in Galveston’s Moody Methodist Church and she at Santa Fe’s Aldersgate United Methodist Church.
If you attend one of our 175-year-old island churches, it may not be obvious that off-island, churches tend to go through a lifecycle. Typically, each is born (or planted), grows, matures and then tends to slowly fade away. Over time, it becomes easier to observe this pattern.
A year ago, we said goodbye to Buddy, our tri-color Pembroke Corgi. I am writing this week in his memory and in honor of all the dogs that have loved each of us in our childhood, youth and old age. Buddy was a young dog when he found us, full of energy and full of confidence.
For a church or school to stand out for endurance through time on the island requires at least a century to reach tier one. But on the mainland, 50 years is more than enough to gain renown. Next week, Bay Area Christian School will celebrate with a half-century banquet and a long look back a…
We went to the movies again. Settled into the same seats, E3 and E4, aisle seats on the first row of the upper section, we shared our popcorn and Diet Coke, and sat back to watch Tom Hanks’ new movie, “A Man Called Otto.”
Imagination. It is the magic carpet of the mind. With it we can journey centuries backward in time or fly forward to a future we have never seen. We can imagine things as we wish they were, and, when it is most productive, we can actually change the world around us.
We rarely have Grammy-winning artists of the contemporary Christian variety performing nearby; so, singer/songwriter Laura Story will likely help fill up the seats at the two-day, Fresh Grounded Faith celebration on Jan. 27 and 28 at Nassau Bay’s Gloria Dei Lutheran Church.
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