Your Church’s Recruiting Strategy

Recruiting in college athletics is a 24/7, 365-day-a-year task that involves seeking out talent, assessing skills, and evaluating character. Athletic programs live or die by it. The church has been given a task similar to recruiting. We are called to evangelize, sharing the gospel with the lost in hopes they will come to Christ. Evangelism …

She Lives Beyond the Grave

Soon it will be Bryce’s birthday. That means I’m in party-planning mode. I imagine what it would be like if my wife, Jill, was planning his party. (Jill passed away three months after Bryce was born.) I can see her organizational skills going to work –the “invite list” would have been a mile long and …

The “Aha Moment” of Marriage

Marriage is like a globe. The globe is real. You can touch it, spin it, study it, and learn from it. However, the globe is not the end of the conversation. Do you remember the first time someone explained to you that the globe was just a small symbol of something greater? We call it …

How to Avoid the Worst Parenting Regret

Everyone has roles and responsibilities in life. Yet, they aren’t all created equal. Consider the proverbial man on his deathbed who laments spending too much time in the office and not enough time with his family. The moral of the story is not to quit your job and stay home. God created work as a …

Free at Last

In 2013, Daniel Larsen was recently declared innocent after 45 years in a Southern California prison. I can’t imagine the mixed emotions –rejoicing for being freed, angry for being imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Surely the question has gone through Larsen’s head: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” But this …

Building Spiritual Muscles in the Mundane

In the 1984 film “The Karate Kid,” an enthusiastic karate student is disappointed when his first lesson involves cleaning and waxing his master’s car. Day after day, Daniel questions the point of laborious tasks such as sanding a wood floor, refinishing a fence and painting Mr. Miyagi’s house. But when Mr. Miyagi finally begins to …

Don’t Discount Students

Today begins the 27th annual SOAR student conference. I attended the first SOAR conference as a seventh grader who was more interested in girls than God’s Word. During one of the sessions, the conference’s founder, Bobby Tucker, shared the story of a girl who had begun a Bible club at her school. For some reason, …

Government Sponsored Missions

The world of politics is not for the faint of heart. Politicians (and their staffs) are constantly trying to gain the upper hand in situations. It is an ongoing battle –much of which takes place in the media. Many times political opponents will try to smear each others reputations with lies, leaks, and slander. Praise …

Get out of the Huddle!

I remember my first year of playing football. I loved competing and playing with my friends. In seventh grade, the coaches did not have sophisticated headsets and hand signals to relay the offensive plays to the quarterback. Instead, our coach would substitute a wide-receiver into every play. Before the receiver would run on the field, …