Back when I was teaching high school English, I came across a book that I enjoyed using with my more advanced students. The title is How to Read Novels Like a Professor.  I leaned most heavily on author Thomas Foster’s first chapter: “Pickup Lines and Open(ing) Seductions, or Why Novels Have First Pages”.  Foster maintained that in the opening paragraphs of a book, a great deal of information is revealed or at least hinted at. Stuff that shapes how one reads the rest of the book. I would challenge my students to look at the first few paragraphs of Lord…

“The early church had nothing but the Old Testament. The New Testament lies hidden in the Old; the Old Testament lies open in the New.” – Randall Terry I am slowly gaining a new appreciation for – and even a fascination with – the Old Testament. If this had happened before I started seminary, maybe I would have pursued a study of Hebrew.  It’s a little embarrassing for this paradigm shift to hit me so late in life and after being in ministry all these years. My oldest brother, Ryan, told me today that his pastor often says something like,…

This morning we attended a memorial service for my great nephew, Maximus Gregory McPike, affectionately known as Mighty Max. Max spent the majority of his ten months of life at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, enduring one physical battle after another. He was my niece’s firstborn and even months before his birth the doctors were making dire predictions about his future.  His arrival went better than hoped in many ways. But all along, Max’s existence was so tenuous that none but the immediately family – and the doctors and nurses – ever got to meet him and hold him. …

You might remember the popular book by Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church, published nearly 30 years ago now. I always considered Warren to have done a great service for the American church by pointing out that there was more to being the Body of Christ than attending a weekly worship service.  Warren’s book reminded Christians that worship was just one purpose among 5 for which God’s people have been gathered together. Maybe it’s time to revisit Warren’s thesis. I can’t help but notice that while worship is clearly vertical in nature, the other four – fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and…

Have you ever seen people turning the word “Bible” into an acronym? This really sticks in my craw. What an impoverished view of Scripture! Not to mention what it does to the gospel itself.  All in an attempt to be clever. This slogan reduces the Bible to a “How To” book full of “instructions” for gaining heaven.  No living and active word of the Lord here, sharper than any two-edged sword. And what’s with the talk of leaving the earth?  If you’re a believer, you aren’t leaving earth. You’re getting a new heaven and a new earth and the Kingdom…

After witnessing that train wreck of a “presidential” “debate”, all I want to write tonight is this: 1 Timothy 2:1-4: “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”  We do need to pray for our current leaders, but more and more I find my heart turning toward…

It’s September and the overnight temps are dropping into the 40s. Soon we’ll need to watch the weather closely to know when to bring our houseplants inside. A year ago, I moved a dahlia into my church office in Sardinia and never took it back outside over the summer. It’s got a nice sunny spot by a window – but it’s not flourishing because I’m not there enough to give the regular watering it needs.  As a result, it’s thin and spindly and it never did flower this summer. In 1 Corinthians 3, the Apostle Paul uses a garden analogy…

Since I was looking into Melchizedek this past week and thinking about the Old Testament priesthood in general, I ended up looking at Peter’s description of believers all together serving as a “royal priesthood”. I suppose there are many different angles to that analogy. Among them: Peter goes on to urge his readers to submit themselves to every earthly authority (2:13) and to be willing to suffer for doing good (2:19).  Verse 15 is worth a bit of meditation: “For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorance of foolish men.” How do we silence…

Today was a good and pleasant day. After a slow start to the day, Melissa and I met her mother at the farmer’s market downtown. The sun was shining but the air was in the low 60s, an ideal September Saturday morning.  We bought locally grown vegetables, drank coffee and ate a couple of outstanding street tacos. We caught up with a couple of local friends as well as our niece and her husband who always have a tent up to sell their homemade sourdough bread.  I had a conversation with a woman who supports Mission Resource and she took…