On a personal note, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, Senior Pastor at Emmanuel A.M.E. Church, and state senator was a very close friend of mine. I met with him on Monday at Emmanuel in the same room where he and 8 congregation members were murdered. I saw him briefly in the statehouse...
Last night, 21-year-old Dylan Roof walked into Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston, SC where he shot and killed nine people. This morning, authorities announced that they had arrested Roof in Shelby, NC. While Roof’s capture provides a partial closure to the shooting itself, today is...
This morning I studied Psalm 137:1: "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Zion."
As the writer reflected on the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, and the slaughter of the people, he grieved deeply. There is a time for deep sorrow as we remember the...
The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 states:
“Man is a special creation of God, made in his own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of his creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God’s creation.” (III...
Life in a fallen world is hard. Even knowing the source of all joy and abundant life, even knowing that the end game is a huge win, it seems that getting there is still hard. Believers and unbelievers alike have to deal with sickness, suffering, and death until Jesus...
Dear Church Family,
As we think about the rapid change in our culture especially in the area of sexuality, please consider the following that comes from a British theologian named Theo Hobson:
For a moral revolution to occur:
What was condemned has to be...
Dear Church,
I have been incredibly saddened and “sickened” by the events that have unfolded in the aftermath of the shooting of Walter Scott. This morning I felt compelled to share several points with our men at Man2Man and I’d like to briefly list those out.
First of...
I came across the following discussion in reading Tim Keller’s book, Prayer (Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God), (which I highly recommend). I thought this was an excellent statement (pp. 193-194):
“[The] Augustinian model is “I am what I love”. As...
This past Sunday, I preached on fighting the good/beautiful/useful fight of the faith and referenced entitled Happiness is a Choice (A Manual on the Symptoms, Causes, and Cures of Depression) by Minirth and Meier. Both are psychiatrists of repute who are adjunct faculty at Dallas...
J.C. Ryle was the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool (England). His Expository Thoughts on the Gospels is a great gift to the church. Bishop Ryle died in 1900 but in writing on Mark 10:1-12, this is what he writes:
“Few are the young couples who think of inviting...