Our Trip to Plymouth:  Two years ago, Vicki and I went to Plymouth (along with several other places in the northeast).  Anyway, we did not go during the tourist season so the town was very quiet.  We stopped at the tourist center and I asked if there was anyone who could give us a historical tour.  They told me to call the lady who leads the ghost tours.  So, I called her.  Turns out, she was estatic because she has a masters degree in early American history... Read More

"I beg of you, don’t go after the next generation with mere moralism, either on the right (don’t have sex, go to church, share your faith, stay off drugs) or on the left (recycle, dig a well, feed the homeless, buy a wristband). The gospel is not a message about what we need to do for God, but about what God has done for us.  So get them with the good news about who God is and what he has done for us. Some of us, it seems, are almost scared to tell people about God.  Perhaps... Read More

    As the economy continues to spiral downward, the political rhetoric seems to reach new meteoric heights.  The donkeys and the elephants argue unquestionably that it is the other sides fault for the mess on Wall Street.  They seem to be more interested in political correctness and their public perception than the problems at hand.  In the meantime, the American public simply shrugs its shoulders wondering if the blame belongs with the all politicians in the first place.     In the midst of... Read More

Milk...Milk...Milk, this is without a doubt one of my daughter’s favorite words, besides Elmo of course.  I told my wife yesterday that we would have been better off buying a diary cow considering the price of whole milk (we have a fenced in back yard don't we?).  The other evening, I was watching the local news and they were talking about the rising price of gas around the nation and where you could drive in the Jackson metro area to find the cheapest fuel (again…my back yard could also hold... Read More

When Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric, he had a vision that they would be number one or number two in any business they conducted as a corporation.  If you do a simple search on Google or Yahoo you can read thousands of vision statements for everything from Fortune 500 companies to mom and pop stores around the country.  Even our good neighbor Nissan has one that is very simple and to the point (Enriching People’s Lives).   It is no surprise that businesses develop vision... Read More

This past Easter, The Clarion Ledger ran an article on individuals who have misgivings about their faith from time to time.  It was a very interesting piece that addressed a real problem for many Christians.  As a minister, my experience indicates that most people have wrestled with the existence of God and religion in general.  However, they assume that they are alone when it comes to such struggles.  I think they are afraid, to one degree or the other, that mentioning past doubts to others... Read More

As I write this, I am sitting in a large convention hotel in Dallas.  This afternoon, I went to lunch with some friends I graduated with from seminary.  Over some Texas sized hamburgers, we got into a conversation that continued on long after the bills were paid.  As we left the restaurant and headed down the scorching sidewalks to our meeting, the intensity of our discussions heated up significantly.  At one point, we decided to stop so everyone could be heard and we could bring our debate to... Read More