Do you ever have a day where everything just seems to go right? I don’t know if it’s the extra shot of espresso I had in my latte this morning, or just an unusual feeling of euphoria, but today has been a good day. I spent the entire day today… Listen ⇢

Connections and clusters, everyone has them. We call them families. We call them friends. We call them congregations. We call them co-workers. We all have them to one degree or another. Some of these social connections are an accident of birth and stronger than titanium. Some of them are by… Listen ⇢

Christmas and I have a love-not-so-much-love relationship. I don’t have a lot of childhood memories of Christmas. I remember one year I got a bicycle. Lots of years it was new underwear. Twenty years ago or so, around the Christmas season, my mom took her life. I don’t think that… Listen ⇢

For those of us who are not techno-geeks, computers are a bit of a mystery. Maybe we understand that they operate by programs that are made up of a computer language that we call code, maybe not. We have heard about hackers, viruses and spam, but we might not understand… Listen ⇢

I think the most important thing a follower of Jesus can learn is to hear from God. Walking in the Spirit in our daily lives requires a cultivation of this ability. However, when you hear God about the big things, that is always overwhelming and very re-assuring. In the fall… Listen ⇢

Road trips, there is nothing like ’em. I took a road trip from Southern California to Phoenix, Arizona. It was one day there and one day back, about five hours of driving time each way, just enough time to do some serious thinking. Enough time to get quiet enough for… Listen ⇢

The first weekend service in our new church location was charged with energy and excitement. There were great expectations. Optimism was the watchword. The congregation was happy and they deserved to be happy. It had been a rough journey with plenty of dangerous moments. But we had survived! The wilderness… Listen ⇢

Over the next year or so the professional staff thinned. The worship pastor took a position at a church in another state. Budget issues caused some reductions. Personal issues caused another. Real estate negotiations and requests for financial assistance from denominational headquarters went forward. All the while the church did… Listen ⇢