In the traditional reckoning of Lent, Sundays are not counted as part of the forty days because they are considered a sort of “mini-Easter” leading up to Easter itself on April 12. So instead of being Day 5 in Lent, this is the first of six Sunday “interludes.”It happens that I am writing this at a conference center no…
Legendary radio broadcaster Paul Harvey died today at the age of 90. Besides virtually creating his own medium that combined reporting with news commentary, he also knew how to tell a story. He gave the tease, paused, told a bit more, paused, let the story unravel a bit at a time, pausing along the way, then he would hit the punch line. He was a ma…
In an article about John Henry Newman’s Lenten sermons, Edward T. Oakes said that Newman had one theme that he returned to time and again:No one sins without making some excuse to himself for sinning. Somehow when I read that, my mind drifted back to a volleyball game more than thirty years ago. I remember that it happened after a churc…
Death may seem like a heavy topic for Lent but it is, after all, what Ash Wednesday is all about. When the worshipers come, they have a little bit of ash (usually taken from the burning of the palm crosses used in the previous year’s Palm Sunday) smudged on their forehead, sometimes in the sign of the cross. More importantly, the pastor then …
Recently I was asked to give a short quote on preaching for publication later this year. As I thought about it, I kept coming back to one thought about how amazing it is that God takes a human event (preaching) and uses it to produce divine results (salvation, conviction, spiritual growth, transformation). Here is the quote I submitted:When we prea…
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). Think of these simple words. Pure.Heart.See.God.We know what those words mean individually, but put them together and we enter a new realm. How do I know if I am “pure in heart”? What does it mean to “see God”? And how should we put these phrases…
This is Day 1 of Lent, the forty days of preparation leading up to Easter, the day of ultimate celebration. A quick check of the Wikipedia entry will give you some helpful background. Note that in the Western tradition, Lent starts today with Ash Wednesday and continues until Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. Sundays are not counted as part of …
I’m happy to announce a brand-new section of the KBM website called FAQs, which stands for Frequently Asked Questions. Those who surf the Internet know that most websites have an FAQs section for questions that com up over and over again.For some time we have wanted to devote a major section of the website to answering questions about the Bib…
Two years ago, more or less on the spur of the moment, I wrote a blog entry called How to Spot a Healthy Church–Quickly. That entry turned out to be popular or least noteworthy because it eventually drew 98 comments, which I think is the record so far for any of my blog entries.I hadn’t thought about that entry until Crosswalk decided t…
Herewith a collection of (mostly) unconnected items . . .*This morning I’m going to be on American Family Radio from 11 AM-12 Noon Central Time. To listen live, click on the link and then click on “AFR-Talk.” You can also watch the live video stream.*We have just posted a new sermon called Miracles Come in Many Varieties. We sent …