International Seminaries
One Gateway initiative which often remains behind-the-scenes is our partnerships with international seminaries. Some of these relationships are formal (with written agreements to support one another) while others are fraternal (more intermittent and relational). We have several of these with schools around the world – mainly focused on the Pacific Rim but also including schools […]
One More Time, At Least
This Sunday is the soft-launch of the fifth church plant Ann and I have helped launch since 1989. In our first, I served as the founding pastor of Pathway Church in Gresham, Oregon. It was my privilege to preach there last month, celebrating Christmas with a few old friends (along with many members who had […]
Prayer in Crisis
When all else fails, pray. That’s the response most people make to a crisis—shown once again by the immediate response to the tragic injury to Damar Hamlin during the Buffalo Bills/Cincinnati Bengals game on Monday night football. Sports commentators, who normally eschew or lampoon references to religion, repeatedly said all they could do in the […]
Lunacy
During the holiday season, one of my granddaughters danced in a production of The Nutcracker. She was a bon-bon, and of course, the best one on the stage. Her small part of the two-hour production was designed to introduce the youngest performers to the big stage in front of larger audiences. The older performers—mostly middle […]
Pastoral Accountability
One type of troubling email that comes my way is when a disgruntled church member asks me to intervene and correct behaviors by one of our graduates currently serving in pastoral leadership. Many church members assume the Southern Baptist denomination has some means to hold pastors accountable for their behavior. We don’t. They assume seminaries […]
Mission Tension
Can you imagine a law passing unanimously in the House of Representatives and with a 97-3 majority in the Senate? It happened in 1996. That law was the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which legally codified the definition of marriage as one man married to one woman. President Clinton signed the law, settling the issue […]
Secret Sauce
Attending eight state conventions this fall has reminded me how cooperation is foundational to the work of Southern Baptists. Most outsiders miss this point. Both unbelievers and believers in other denominations do not understand how cooperation is the foundation upon which our work as Southern Baptists rests. The Southern Baptist Convention has no authority over […]
The Changing Nature of Elections
It’s election week in America which prompted me to think about past elections, my participation as a voter for more than 40 years, and my previous observations about this important process. So, I Google-searched myself to see what I had written about elections. These comments, written after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, reveal […]
Not Just Words
Profanities and vulgarities are becoming more common in American culture. Words once reserved for the locker room, barracks, or factory floor are now shouted as cheers at major sporting events. In San Diego, the Padres vanquished their hated playoff rivals—the Evil Empire known as the Dodgers—and a player coined a rally phrase which has been […]
Fears & Cheers: The Leader They Want or The Leader They Need
Striving for Praise Dale Carnegie, in his famous book, claimed the most precious sound to a person is their name. While this is perhaps true to an extent, what people really long for is validation and approbation: “Good job!” Such praise and affirmation make us feel that our work or our lives have purpose and […]