Posts with the category “life-together”

Dawn Staley is the head coach of the University of South Carolina women’s basketball team. She is a former professional and Olympic basketball player, and is now considered to be one of the best current college basketball coaches. In a recent interview she was asked about what she looks for in potential recruits to determine if they will be a good fit for her team. She responded: “do they know how...  Read More

One of the most striking takeaways for me from our recent trip to Thailand was the plethora of Buddhist shrines and temples. This particularly stood out as we drove three hours through the mountains of northern Thailand to get to the town where the Canfields live. Jutting out of the side of virtually every mountain was a large shrine or temple. There were also shrines along the highway that were c...  Read More

In 1 Corinthians 13:11, Paul famously writes, "When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.” One of the realities of growing up is increasing in responsibility. While we certainly gain more freedom as we get older, that freedom brings with it a greater need to be responsible. However, responsibility can be tricky and can be approa...  Read More

I have recently been involved in premarital counseling sessions with four different couples. Over the years I have officiated a number of weddings and conducted dozens of counseling sessions for those getting married. We talk about all kinds of topics, but one of my favorite to talk about is holidays. Even after years of marriage, the holidays can be the least peaceful time of the year. Even thoug...  Read More

I recently ran across the following quote: “Maturity requires suffering. Some of [the suffering] may be petty, some of it may be serious, and some of it may be so psychologically scarring that you’ll be getting over it for a long time.” Suffering comes in a variety of forms and can ebb and flow through various seasons. But one thing is for sure: it is often the catalyst for spiritual maturing. Her...  Read More

I recently read the account of an actress who auditioned for a particular part in a play. Instead of getting the part she wanted, she was given another part that she was far less interested in. Despite her initial disappointment, she went on to talk about all the things she learned from accepting a role that she would have rather not had. What a helpful picture for thinking about our own lives. In...  Read More

I just reached 1 Chronicles in my Bible reading plan. If Leviticus is a good place to get confused, then 1 Chronicles is a good place to get bored. The first nine chapters are all names! Literally, it’s just name after name after name after name. Why would the author of Chronicles do this? The answer comes from the context out of which it was written. In the Hebrew ordering of the Old Testament, C...  Read More

While away on sabbatical I read a book that explored three daily temptations faced by pastors. Upon further reflection, I think each of these temptations are experienced by many of us in many different ways week after week.The first temptation is to be everywhere for everybody. The tendency for many of us to over-commit is ever upon us, and it can lead to a life of rushing and busyness, leaving li...  Read More

Have you ever wondered what it takes to have a “successful” life? This question is often evaluated by such things as: my level of happiness, how much money I have, fulfillment in my job, if I feel liked/accepted by others, how much I feel in control of my life, how my kids are functioning, how well I’m getting along with my spouse, and the list goes on and on. In short, many of the ways we define ...  Read More

We recently had to take our car to a mechanic. The repair was supposed to be pretty simple and quick, taking only a couple of hours one morning. Of course it turned into two full days of work over the course of a week. While it was terribly inconvenient, there was a silver lining: Johnny the marvelous mechanic. Not only was he overly apologetic about the process taking so long, he also stuck with ...  Read More

Last month I officiated a funeral for the father of my childhood best friend. As my friend and his siblings were cleaning out his dad’s house, they came across a number of old videos and pictures. One of the videos contained footage of a joint birthday party that me and my friend had when we turned 5 years old. As I watched the video, one prevailing thought hit me: wow I was a bad kid!The video sh...  Read More

The Bible ends with a literary category referred to as “apocalyptic prophecy.” The book of Revelation is written in a form of prophecy that is filled with all kinds of pictures, which are both highly symbolic and often confusing. Furthermore, these pictures are often downright scary! There are armies and dragons and bowls of wrath and blood and death and on and on and on it goes . . . In other wor...  Read More

Over my years as pastor, I have come to notice that certain conversations circle back around among staff and elders. One of those has surfaced again recently: the dreaded topic of announcements at our weekly corporate worship service. For some reason, this quirky space in our service has almost become a rite of passage into ministry. I did it for 8 years, Tim Wilson is in his 7th year of doing it,...  Read More

The year was 538 B.C. Two Jews, Zechariah and Zerubbabel, had just returned to Jerusalem from Babylon with a group of other exiles. Their enthusiasm was high, for they had finally been able to come back to their homeland to rebuild the city, restore the temple, and make a fresh start at life. However, twenty years later, after many trials and setbacks, work was slow, morale was down, and the overa...  Read More

Jem and I recently spent the morning together. We started, of course, with breakfast at City Café, where the waitresses call you “honey” and the old guys at the big table by the window always have a new joke to tell you. From there we rode our bikes all around downtown Northport. We talked to two guys fishing down by the river, passed one of our neighbors who was also out biking, waved to people s...  Read More

 After sitting through the Sunday School class on parenting this past spring, Anna Grace and I have had our fair share of parenting conversations lately. One helpful concept from that class is the realization that our approach to parenting has to shift over the course of a child’s life. The issues a parent is facing with a six-year-old are different from those of a sixteen-year-old (or at least th...  Read More

 In preaching from Psalm 84 recently Tim Thomassian referenced the “Sons of Korah.” These temple attendants from the Old Testament might seem to merely be a “behind the scenes” group of second-level importance compared to priests or prophets or kings. In reality, however, they were highly vital in helping the rest of God’s people to worship the Lord.Last month, for the first time in over two years...  Read More

 I recently read the memoirs of Major Dick Winters, who is best known for commanding the Easy Company of paratroopers during World War II. After demonstrating stellar leadership of the company, Winters was promoted to a higher rank, which meant he had to leave the day-in, day-out life among the men he had fought beside through thick and thin. His comment on having to leave them gripped me:“Leaving...  Read More

  It seems that tornadoes are just part of living in Alabama. I have lived in Alabama my entire life and can remember practicing tornado drills at school and home from the time I was very young. A few weeks ago another potentially tornado-producing line of storms swept through our state. And so our family did as we always do in those times: we faithfully stayed tuned in to the world’s greatest wea...  Read More

I recently watched the old movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids with my kids. In case you’ve never seen it, the kids in the movie have a wacky scientist dad whose latest invention accidentally shrinks them down to microscopic size. When they are unintentionally thrown out with the trash and must navigate their way across the yard, they encounter all sorts of “trials of various kinds” (cf. James 1:2), fr...  Read More

One of my favorite kinds of books are those written by pastors about being a pastor. In one of them that I read over the holidays, the author said that after a few years of being a pastor he made Matthew 28:10 his theme verse for everything he did as a pastor: “Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me’.” Jesus says this to his...  Read More

This past January my paternal grandfather (Pawpaw) died; he was a few weeks shy of being 93. Growing up my family would spend every other Christmas with my Pawpaw and Grammy. We would go to their house and share a huge meal together, build a fire in their fireplace, and all of the grandkids would show off our new toys to one another. On the mantle Grammy had little toy blocks with letters on them ...  Read More

My kids are now getting old enough that they have started bringing home report cards from school. I remember those days, when my report card would provide a very clear-cut indication of how I was performing in each precisely defined subject. I also remember what it felt like when I graduated from school into life. All of the sudden things weren’t as cut and dry anymore, and very often I found myse...  Read More

If someone asked you what you do to grow in your faith, what would you say? Many of us would perhaps start with things like personal prayer and Bible reading or attending corporate worship or serving others. However, have you ever thought about how the annual church business meeting can help you grow in your faith? In Acts 2:42 we are told that the first church in Jerusalem devoted themselves to f...  Read More

Over the past few weeks, thousands of college students have once again flooded our little town, an annual ritual that has been occurring here now for almost 200 years. Being a college student is uniquely difficult, and we as a local church can and should be looking for opportunities to minister to college students who come our way. In Luke 2:52, Jesus’ years in the teens and twenties are described...  Read More

As we walked down the trail I found myself engaging my kids with one single, focused message: “stay out of the mud!” Rather than enjoy the beauty around us, defeating the mud became my top priority. Fortunately, as we made our way deeper into the forest, something caught my eye above the gurgling creek off to our left: a majestic hawk perched calmly on a tree branch, quietly surveying the surround...  Read More

As we are all aware, the entirety of our gatherings (i.e. corporate worship, Sunday School,  shepherding groups, kids and youth) were all forced into virtual modes for the entirety of the spring this year due to COVID-19. As we began looking at regathering, first for our services over the summer, and then for additional activities starting in the fall, we as the staff felt much uncertainty about w...  Read More

In his book 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, Tony Reinke outlines specific ways in which our increasingly digitized lives are negatively impacting us. The eleventh way, according to his book, is that we are becoming more harsh toward one another. It does seem, for some reason, that there are statements we would never say face to face that seem to fly from our fingertips when we start typing on ...  Read More

As the latest round of racially-based sin has struck our society over the past few weeks, I have thought back to the tension I felt in the sermons I preached on race about a year and a half ago. In one sense, addressing the sin of racism is simple: to demean or dismiss or devalue anyone on account of their skin color is a sin in the eyes of God. Furthermore, the Bible is clear over and over again ...  Read More

Well, we have effectively entered the next phase of attempting to navigate a COVID-19 world. If we thought quarantine was difficult, now we have the challenge of figuring out how to regather. In some ways this may be the trickiest phase yet. And why is that? Mainly because we all have different thoughts and opinions about when and how to do that. Though we have been given some guidance by our civi...  Read More

Over the course of the first few weeks of this year I found myself officiating a wedding, conducting a funeral, and leading a baby dedication. Indeed, the opportunity to walk alongside others in various seasons of life is one of the great privileges of pastoral ministry. It is also a reminder that part of the intended diversity of God’s people is age. Some of us are younger, some of us are older, ...  Read More

I have been a parent for just over seven years now, and it is one of the most joyful and challenging endeavors I have ever attempted. My guess is that most parents would agree. From the early days of parenting that exhaust us physically to the latter days of parenting that exhaust us emotionally, the path of parenting is filled with all sorts of various trials and struggles and hardships. It is a ...  Read More

I recently read of an art gallery that has an exhibit for children, one in which they are given a blank piece of paper and placed in front of a mirror so they can attempt to draw a self-portrait. If you had to draw a picture of yourself as you enter this new year, what would you draw? Are you expectant or regretful, hopeful or cynical, self-confident or self-condemning, trusting or fearful, tired ...  Read More

A few weeks ago I had breakfast with Max Smith. As we sat down Max asked, “So how much time do you have?” Now I have not been a pastor all that long, but I have learned that is a question that must be answered very carefully. So I responded, “Why do you ask?” To which he responded, “I want you to come see a little bit of my world.” I then spent the next couple of hours seeing Max’s world. For thos...  Read More

I have been reminded lately, through a number of conversations and situations around our congregation, of the reality of suffering that many of us are walking through. Interestingly, Peter tells those who follow Christ not to “be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you” (1 Peter 4:12), and so perhaps various experiences of pain we find ourselves in are to be expected. In light of that ...  Read More

I have been reminded recently of one of my favorite Sunday School classes: the class on financial stewardship.  One of the reasons is that this class seems to create really healthy conversations for me and Anna Grace.  One of the core concepts in this class is the budget, or "spending plan," which is exactly what it sounds like: a plan for when, where, and how I will spend, or not spend, my money....  Read More

Summer time creates opportunities for me that are not typically available. A few weeks ago my schedule worked out in such a way that I was able to take my six year old to breakfast. Just me and him. No phones, no distractions, no agenda. Just dad and son time. Time to be guys together. As I delivered the news to him that morning, and he raced off to get dressed, his enthusiasm was obvious. As we c...  Read More

Last month we made an unexpected announcement: due to very generous financial giving, we were able to pay off the remainder of our building debt! This has eliminated several more years of making a mortgage payment, allowed us to tithe to local and international ministries, and has created for us an increased budget to explore what it looks like for us to continue to be “worshipers in community eng...  Read More

Five months ago I had an idea: what if we created a space for us as a congregation where the goal is to come together and play? As I chewed on it and bounced it around with the staff and elders, I thought of a hundred reasons why we shouldn’t do it. As the reasons NOT to do it escalated, I decided to try thinking of reasons we should at least try it. Here’s what I came up with:Playing together bui...  Read More

Piano LessonsSix months ago I started taking piano lessons. I’m not exactly sure why, except that it’s been a “bucket list” item of mine for a while now. Also, someone recommended a teacher: Ms. Pamelia Bedingfield (picture your classic southern grandmother). Now, it is important to understand that I have absolutely no prior music experience. When I shared that with Ms. Pamelia at our first meetin...  Read More