Over the last few years my imagination has been seeking an analogy to explain the great irony of misplaced faith: that those who “believe” in Jesus so as to avoid hell end up remaining as lost as anyone and are perhaps even tougher for Jesus to reach than those who have never heard of Him. The analogy that popped into my head this morning is perhaps a bit crude, but I think it’s on target. You can be the judge: The person who comes knocking on Jesus’ door only to avoid hell is really only seeking to use Jesus as…

A man at my church gave me a copy of a book to read. The author is Don Piper and the title is 90 Minutes in Heaven. And yes, as you can tell from the title, it is one of those first hand accounts of experiencing death, getting a glimpse of the afterlife, and then returning to life. I never know what to make of such stories. I tend to be guarded in believing anything out of the ordinary.  I know some of these afterlife stories have proven to be outright lies, but this guy seems pretty sincere and he’s…

I started as pastor of Sardinia Baptist Church about a year and a half ago. I am proud to call myself American Baptist.  But it wasn’t until today that I became a baptizer.  This morning I had the privilege of baptizing a sweet father and his young son. It was the son who had made the first step a few weeks back – and I was thrilled to see dad join him in coming forward to seek baptism. The joy I felt in being a part of this morning’s sacrament caught me off guard. Nothing could have brought me down.…

In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard points out a crucial distinction which earnest believers need to be conscious of when reading Scripture. It’s worth quoting him at length: Love, Paul … tells us, is patient, kind, free of jealousy and arrogance, is not rude or self-seeking, is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs, takes no joy in things that are wrong but instead in what is true. It always protects, always accepts, always hopes, and endures everything. And it never quits (1 Cor. 13:4-8).  People usually read this, and are taught to read it, as telling them…

I have given myself the daunting task of preaching from 1 Peter 3 this coming Sunday in preparation for two baptisms at the end of the service: 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is,…

More than once, when my family and I lived in Haiti we witnessed the UGLY SIDE of charity: The well-intentioned generosity of individuals and ministries frequently fostered deep dependency and entitlement. Mere handouts often brought as much harm as good. (And sometimes more!) In the 1990s, the World Bank conducted extensive interviews among the poor of 60 different nations, speaking to 60,000 individuals. The central question was straightforward: “What is poverty?” While answers did include the lack of material things –food, shelter, medicine – the interviewers were caught off guard by what the respondents stressed most. They used words like…

I have a confession.  Before I became a pastor for an American Baptist church, the burning question I secretly wanted to ask a Baptist was … why center an entire denomination around the rite of baptism? Other denominational names made a fair amount of sense: But why claim baptism as your identifier? After all, you’ve never heard of a gathering of Communionists.  But a year and a half in, I am starting to appreciate how central baptism is to the Christian life – or at least how central it is supposed to be.  It is all about that vast gulf…

The more I think about it, the more excited I get about this retreat idea for my dissertation project. Do you know that feeling you get when you sense that God is at work in some situation? It is a mix of anticipation, enthusiasm, and confidence which feels like it is coming from the outside.  Significant progress has been made in the past week since this lightbulb first lit up.  I have now reserved a date for the retreat with the local Baptist campground: January 31st to February 2, 2025. It’s a great facility and just 15 minutes from the…

At the beginning of this year, I began observing regular office hours at my church. It’s only 4 or 5 hours a week on Mondays, but it makes a world of difference. I usually take the time to write some birthday and anniversary cards and, almost as important, get a jump start on the week’s sermon writing.  And since I live 25 minutes away in a different town, being there on a weekday keeps me a bit more connected to the little community surrounding the church than if I just commute in and out on Sunday mornings. Fortunately, the “pastor’s…