This coming fall, I will be teaching again at Southwestern Baptist Seminary. I will teach the course, “Prayer and Global Ministry” that has not been taught at Southwestern during the sixteen years of my retirement. This time it will be an online course through technology with which I am unfamiliar. In four days last week,…
Last week I attended a meeting of approximately two thousand Baptists. In the meeting area, participants were mostly of one mind, with a few exceptions. In the Exhibit Area, not so much of one mind. That’s one reason I spend so much time in the Exhibit Area. Partly because we allow each church to be autonomous, we are nearly…
After several days of temperatures over 100 degrees, what do we have ahead? More days of the same. July is hot and dry. Even then, summer is the subject of lots of songs and sayings. Here are some of my favorites: “A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing,…
It hasn’t happened very often, but it happened again recently. I don’t always dream, and when I do, I often don’t remember parts of it the next day, but this particularly Saturday night I had a very clear dream. In my dream, I remembered a few events from my early years. Then the dream shifted to a…
Last Saturday was Canada Day and tomorrow is U.S. Independence Day – both representing freedom. Here are some of my favorite freedom quotes: “May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right.” — Peter Marshall “God keep our land, glorious and free!” O…
When believers disagree, whether it be in a local church, in a group of churches, or in an entire denomination of churches, at least four things must be remembered. When it is all said and done, Jesus wins. Re-read the back of the Book. I’m not sure that once in heaven, we will be able to look…
In my pre-teenage and early teenage years, I lived on a dead-end street in the West University area of Houston. On our one block, there was a vacant lot, owned by the man who lived next to it. One year, after Christmas, he gave us permission to build a Christmas tree fort on his lot. The five boys…
Bob Dylan sang, “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. As further proof of this, another baseball fanatic/friend sent me a copy of “Identifying baseball pitch types in 2023: A modern field guide to MLB’s diversifying arsenals.” The article included discussions on various weapons of a pitcher: Fastball (four seam and two seam), Cutter, Slider, Sweeper, Curveball,…
Giving or Investing? The most dreaded sermon a minister ever preaches is likely one on money. Listeners don’t like hearing it and most don’t comment to the preacher following the sermon with an, “Enjoyed your sermon” favorite. So, I didn’t preach on money yesterday. I preached on investing and used as an illustration from Mark 12:41-44,…
Today is Memorial Day. Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across…