The following sermon is 5 years old and is one of the last sermons I preached at Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, IL, where I served as pastor for 16 years.The sermon is based on Ephesians 4:29-32, which begins this way:"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to …
A friend asked about my opinion of the pastor in Florida who plans to publicly burn the Quran this Saturday, September 11, the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed 3000 people. You want my opinion? Okay, here it is this. This pastor is a fool, and the idea of burning the Quran is offensive on every possible level. It needless…
August was # 1.That’s a phrase you hardly ever hear. We usually talk about the “dog days” of August when things are hot, people are wrapping up summer vacations, and students are getting ready to go back to school. There aren’t any major holidays in August. The stretch run in baseball doesn’t start until September, foo…
This morning we went the Northway Campus of the Village Church in Dallas. This is a satellite campus of the main campus in Flower Mound, north of Dallas-Forth Worth Airport. There is another satellite campus in Denton. Together three locations offer 11 services each week, drawing somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-9,000 people every Sunday. We chos…
While surfing the Internet yesterday, I happened to run across a reference to a magazine called The Sword of Lord. Presbyterian minister Mark Roberts recounts his negative exposure to the magazine this way: I can’t hear the phrase “sword of the Lord” without thinking back to an odd experience during my college years. For no appare…
This summer we’ve been working on a tabletop display for KBM that we can take with us when we travel. As part of that project, Marlene gathered some of the comments we’ve received from people around the world regarding this ministry. Today she showed me what she had put together. It’s far more than we need for the display and more…
Whenever I called him on the phone, I would always ask, “Is this the Old Singer?” and he would reply with a laugh, “What’s left of him.” I thought of that when the news came that my dear friend Jamall Badry died suddenly over the weekend. The news was a shock to me in so many ways. Just last month I had chatted with hi…
The last election was mean-spirited and it was hard to discern between truth and lies. Should Christians separate from political activism and focus on “Christian work” instead?
The picture shows the beginning of a handwritten letter from an inmate in Virginia. Here is the rest of his story: I was put in jail with no hope left for my life. I had no hope in God. No hope in anything. I thought my life was over. I tried to kill myself. I didn’t have the will to live anymore. God intervened again. He spoke to me and said…
For those who don’t know, our grandson Knox Samuel Pritchard was born on August 10 in Dallas, Texas. His proud parents are Josh and Leah Pritchard. Knox weighed 10 pounds, 14 ounces and was 22 inches long. Josh has taken a number of pictures of Knox that he posted in an album on his Facebook page. These pictures come from that album. …