It’s 1983.
I’m in a Baptist church.
That’s scary enough.

I’m sitting before a council of men who are testing my readiness to enter the ministry.

It isn’t going well.

First of all, I didn’t know that one had to “enter” the ministry.

But, in order to fulfill one of the qualifications to participate in launching a new church, something I [...]

In my last post (Frameworks for Mission: Direction or Dogma) we looked at the experience of Cornelius as described by Luke in Acts chapter 10. I asked the question, Are we saved by cognitive acceptance of certain doctrines or by the direction of our lives?  

Have you looked at a photo from the 60’s and the 70’s lately? A couple of months ago, I stopped by Starbucks with my wife, Niza. Starbucks had recently begun an emphasis of getting back to their roots. In conjunction with that theme they had a photo from the early 70’s of their original Starbucks [...]

Have you ever mapped out your life? Just recently I was thinking about the Ideas that have stayed with me over the years. Some of these are from books, while others are from conversations. Though some ideas are difficult to separate from the experiences that carry them, these are not primarily experiences that have [...]

The Baja Beach Club in Barcelona made headlines three years ago when it began to “tag” it’s patrons with microchips embedded in the arm. The chip is used to identify people when they enter and pay for drinks.

So, let’s say, you go to the Baja Beach Club. A nurse preps you with a local anesthetic. [...]

Welcome back. You belong here. I’m shooting-from-the-hip but here goes.

Questions I’m asking #1 - 32…

1. We are exiting the postmodern and entering a new world dominated by genetic engineering. What shape will the gospel take when men no longer die?

2. Why do people still [...]

Joyful Easter. Fifty thousand years of accumulated experience by the 70 - 100 billion Humans who have lived on this planet have led us to know at least one thing: the dead don’t return.

welcome back. you belong here.

I was asked this last week about Barna’s new book Revolution. I confess that by-and-large I don’t read Christian books. Barna’s book is no exception. So while I couldn’t comment on the content of the book, I did comment on the title, [...]

American Culture, Shopping, and Christmas

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I hate to shop.
My wife loves to shop.
That’s marriage.

Cultural Anthropologist and Marketing Guru, Clotaire Rapaille, writes (The Culture Code) about why people around the world live and buy as they do. Each culture, he tells us, has a code that if discovered [...]