A few years ago, I visited Washington D.C. again, having been to our nation’s capital probably a half dozen times.  I am always taken aback by its history and its architecture.  On this last visit I was admiring the Jefferson Memorial, a tribute to one of our country’s founding fathers and our third president.  What caught my attention were the inscriptions inside of the memorial.  Many of them were references to God.  One such quote reads, God who gave us life gave us libert

Recently, my local church family made the decision to allow women to serve in leadership roles in our church community. Since the founding of our church in the early 1970’s these roles were only open to qualified men. The view of our church (and the view which I held for many years) was that the Bible does not permit women to serve in leadership in the church. Throughout my Christian Journey whenever I heard that a church had allowed women to serve in such leadership position

In the late 1980’s I became a follower of Jesus. It is a decision which I will never regret. The last 30 years have been some amazing years in my life as I have watched God mold and shape me. My conversion to the way of Jesus came around the birth of the Christian Moral Majority. The Moral Majority was simply a politically conservative action group in the United States which consisted of many well-known Christian leaders and conservative politicians. Many conservative Ch

What I am about to say I would not have said several years ago. Actually, what I am about to say may be something that most in the world, and especially Christians, will find hard to hear. I need to say it though, not because it is something new or the latest spiritual fad, but because I believe it is truth. As Christians we always need to be challenging our faith. We must never settle for faith that has not been tested or has not gone through the fires of discernment. Pa

People all around the World are made of different tribes. Tribes are simply a way in which people view life. Most tribes are territorial or are part of a particular ethnic group or simply see life in a certain way. What they may have in common is certain values or customs. Within the United States tribes can fall under many categories. Our political party, our stance on certain issues, the communities we live in, the schools we attend and the church we belong to can all

Imagine you are living in the deep south in the year of 1845. You are part of the Baptist faith. Your denomination has just made the announcement that if you own slaves you cannot be a missionary for the Baptist church. So, what do you do? Well in the south, Baptist churches met in Augusta, Georgia to form the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Convention believed that God permitted slavery and they had Bible verses to prove it. Many Christians in the sou

It is confession time. It has been almost 40 years and I feel compelled to finally confess this sin. I feel like it is the right thing to do. I need to clear my conscience and free those who were wrongly accused. So here goes. In my teens there were times when I did things which I know where not right and certainly not pleasing to my parents. Sometimes others suffered from my sins. This account is one of those times. By the way I am not proud of this and certainly not

“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.” Luke 2:1 It is difficult to see any reality beyond the reality that we live in. We usually assume the way we see the World or the World we live in is the only possibility. One of my favorite movies was “The Truman Show” starring Jim Carrey. Carrey plays the part of Truman Burbank who was adopted as a baby by a television company and is now starring in his own movie wh

During my freshmen year of College at the University of Arizona I was approached by young man who belonged to one of the Christian Campus Ministries. He simply asked me one question. “Do you know where you going when you die? Of course, I knew of only one of two responses. Heaven or Hell. I responded by saying, “I hope Heaven.” This response was all he needed to know about where my eternal destiny laid. So, he then began sharing with me about how I could go to heaven.

I became a Christian in the late 80’s. Historically this was the time that the “Moral Majority” movement was in full swing. The moral majority was a reaction to what many religious and political leaders believed was the decline of the moral culture in America. Proof of this decline was the legalization of abortion and the removal of prayer from public schools. As a new Christian, I remember campaigns to educate churches on how to vote. Soon I assumed that if you were not

It was a political phrase which stood in complete opposition of the political parties in power. It was a phrase that was filled with so much meaning that those who would try to live it out would most likely lose their lives. There was one King in the World and his name was Caesar. There was one power center and it was in Rome. Anyone who disagreed with this belief or tried to usurp the authority of Rome would be crushed. No exceptions. Yet on a little hillside in Judea

In the 2nd Century of the church there was a false doctrine being spread through the church called Gnosticism. At the heart of their teaching there was a belief that matter was evil and spirit was good. The effect this teaching had on the church was huge. One of the outcomes was that salvation was simply about saving a person’s inner soul, and that the physical body was actually evil. Gnostics would claim that true salvation comes by escaping your body and eventually esca

Probably what the World needs is another blog site, right? It seems like wherever you turn someone has a blog or post about what they think and what they believe. Inherently there is probably nothing wrong with them. It is good for us as communities to share our thoughts and ideas with one another. Certainly sharing is something that we as a World can get better at doing. Many times we want everyone to hear us and in the market place of ideas we not only want them to hea