New Heroes
One of the best things about the growing diversity in the Southern Baptist Convention is the inclusion of new heroes. There have been pioneers among Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Hispanic, and Romanian Southern Baptists (and many other groups as well). The groups listed here are particularly significant for me because of personal relationships with the founders […]
Resiliency
We are kicking off another semester at Gateway this week. Since most of our students live in California (even in an online or video-classroom world), maintaining academic programs and organizational operations is challenging. Our COVID infection and death rates in Southern California are still very high. Several of our faculty and many students have had […]
Making It Work
Over this past weekend, I attended a men’s ministry meeting at my current church and a worship service at my former church. Being at these church events reminded me it has been more than a decade since I have been a racial or cultural majority member of a church. Our former church was a multiracial, […]
Christian Citizenship
This week, Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States. He deserves our support and respect as Christian citizens. Here is some of what that means. We are responsible to pray for President Biden. The Bible says, “First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for […]
A Crisis Gospel
Events last week in Washington, D.C. were historic in all the wrong ways. For those of us who train leaders, it was a case study in leadership failures culminating in disgustingly seditious acts. For Christians, it was embarrassing as Capitol invaders carried symbols of our faith, appropriated our language, and referenced God as being on […]
Why Plan for the Future
A pastor recently shared an observation and a dilemma all leaders face. He told me about his strategic plan for 2020, and how it disintegrated and had to be recreated in a very different form in March 2020 when the COVID pandemic emerged as the defining cultural event for last year. His observation: our best-laid […]