I am in Jackson, Mississippi for a week on campus at Wesley Biblical Seminary. This is my last of four in-person “intensives” as I finish my last semester of class before starting work on my dissertation come October. It is very different from my first three visits to WBS. My first class in January of 2022 had over 20 students. We are down now to 4 – two who are just starting, one who is on his second semester, and me. We had several hours of great discussions in class today since it is just 4 students and the professor.…

Being an introvert, I must say that one of my biggest pet peeves is having another person talk over the top of me in the midst of a conversation.  First, do you understand how much effort I expended just to begin that sentence?  Only to have you toss it aside to make room for your own? I can understand a child doing this. But a grown man? (And, yes, I do find this more common among men than women. Do you?) How do you function in life as an adult if you do not have the patience, grace, and manners…

After preaching weekly for three months now, it is going to be weird to wake up tomorrow morning and not head off to Sardinia to preach. I am guessing it will not even feel like a Sunday. This certainly does not feel like a Saturday night. It is probably good for a preacher to take a Sunday off now and then and equally good for the congregation to hear from somebody else now and then.  But I think I will actually miss being able to deliver a message tomorrow morning.  Although I am taking a short break from teaching, I…

I find it interesting that biblical scholars are all forced to deal with the postmodern mindset. The same twisted ideas and tortured (il)logic that show up in various “theories” like Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, and Fat Theory have been set loose on the Bible as well.  Both of the books I read for my latest paper addressed to what extent something can be known and whether the meaning of a text is centered more in the author or in the reader.  (For those who have been fortunate enough to avoid these conversations so far, the postmodernists believe that nothing…

Doctoral Program Update:  I am currently approaching the 2/3 mark in my pursuit of a Doctorate of Ministry. And it is currently ruining my vacation. That is all.

We started a little family vacation today – just Melissa and I with Caleb and Sarah and Melissa’s mom, Trudy. We are headed down to Florida tomorrow but decided today to make a slight detour through Georgia in order to see Fort Moore (formerly “Fort Benning”) where Caleb will be stationed come July.  So tonight we are staying in a rundown Comfort Inn on the edge of Columbus, Georgia after a long and mostly uneventful day of driving. Tomorrow we will check out the base and a local military museum before heading down to our Airbnb on Navarre Beach. The…

“The greatest problem in preaching is not the preparation of the sermon but the preparation of the preacher.” – Dennis Kinlaw Now that I am preaching weekly I keep telling people that I have come to the realization that I was not ready to preach even 3 years ago. It was a few weeks into preaching at Sardinia Baptist Church – where I was called this past March – when I realized that I was, in fact, finally prepared to preach.  (Admittedly, this means that I was not yet ready when I was preaching weekly at the little United Methodist…

Remember, The Westminster Confession of Faith is THE guiding document of Calvinism. (Even above Scripture, some would argue. 😏 )  With that in mind, check out what Westminster says about infants: “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who works when, and where, and how He pleases: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.” In other words, just like the rest of the population, some among infants belong to the elect, and many are among the non-elect. Elect babies who…