Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

There are people that, I have to tell you, I hope burn in hell.

I’m not saying it’s right for me to want that; I’m just saying that the feeling comes over me strong and I can’t stop it.

I bet you know the feeling, too. For example, when someone harms a child it takes every ounce of my Christianity to not wish hell on that person.

But this post is not about the people we would be happy to see in hell.

It’s about the people we would not be happy to see in heaven.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a woman whose brother died. I knew the man, though I did not know him well. He believed the things that conservative Christian traditions like mine believe are necessary to go to heaven. He went to “the right church” (once in a while). When he was there, he always put a check in the offering plate. He was decent enough to his family. Decent, if...

Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash

The last three weeks brought back a fear that I didn’t feel for 30 years: The fear of everything I love ending in an atomic fireball.

Kneeling under the flash of that fear is the moment when my faith either turns out to be real enough for the real world–or just make-believe.

It is easy to say “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil” (Psalm 23:4) when I have a good, stable income, health insurance, plenty of savings, and six figures worth of equity in my house. It is easy to say when I live in a quiet neighborhood where the biggest threats on the street are the occasional door-to-door salesman or stray dog.

It is easy to say when I live in a country that seems like a castle, standing behind the mightiest military in human history and two ocean moats.

Have any Christians in human history ever...

Photo by Rosalind Chang on Unsplash

Wait a minute. Is that guy wearing a unicorn costume?

I was in a restaurant, waiting to pick up my takeout order. The place was empty except for the man coming through the door.

The grown man…wearing a dirty pink and purple unicorn costume. A single glittery unicorn horn sparkled just above his bearded, burly face.

I took a couple of steps back and tried to not stare.

A sight like this causes a man to search his mind for an explanation.

Could he be a performer on his way to a children’s party?

The grubbiness of his costume and his unkempt face made that unlikely.

When he stepped up to place his order, I listened for how he would explain his costume to the woman at the register.

But he didn’t. He gave a cheerful “hello,” said something about the weather, ordered his food, and told her he liked her shirt (bright red with a picture of a...

My dad is 72 today (March 9, 2022).

I imagine that 72 is a happy birthday. That’s a long life! That is a lot of years in which a man can find so many reasons to be thankful.

I imagine that 72 is also a hard birthday because, well, a man has to wonder how much time he has left…and how much harder it will get to keep on living one more year.

Seventy-two is not what we call a “milestone year,” but it is one for Dad. Last year–not long after his 71st birthday–cancer cast its shadow over him for the second time in his life. The doctors told him that with this cancer, it is not a matter of “if,” but “when.”

So 72 is a milestone, as every birthday will be for Dad from now on.

Dad and I are different in a few ways. One of them is that Dad has what we in our family always called the “heebie-jeebies.” He is always doing something or looking for something to do. None of us ever knew Dad to...

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

My dad baptized me “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” on March 4, 1987–35 years ago on the day of this writing. I was 11 years old.

I keep a reminder of this anniversary in my calendar along with reminders of other anniversaries, birthdays, and milestones.

My baptism is worth remembering and thinking about each year.

If you’re not part of my faith fellowship–the Church of Christ–and its traditions, please let me fill you in on a few things about the way we “do baptism.” This is strictly FYI before I get to the point of this post.

First, we are those Christians–the ones who call themselves “born again.” This comes from something that Jesus said: “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (…or “born again”, as some translations of the Bible put it) (Gospel of John 3:3) and “no one can enter the...

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

Last night, I tossed and turned for hours thinking about something that Fiona Hill said in an interview I read yesterday: “We’re already in [World War III].”

Imagining where all of this will lead is scary enough. Last night, I had to lie to my nine-year old about the danger in the world right now. I told him that “the bad guys” could not get to us here, but you and I know that is not true. It turns out that, sometimes, parents have to lie to their kids to keep them safe from their own imaginations.

Since I do have a nine-year old, I keep thinking about all the dads and moms with nine-year olds in Ukraine. In places like Kyiv. I think about them trying to comfort and entertain and explain and feed and protect their nine-year old kids in bomb shelters and subway tunnels. I think about them holding their nine-year olds close in the darkness as the...

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

This may be the official first post of my old age.

It’s Sunday morning and I’m in a quiet hotel lobby in Louisville, Kentucky. My son and wife are still asleep upstairs. In a couple of hours, we’ll get back on the road to finish the last leg of our trip to visit family in Tennessee.

When I was a kid, we didn’t travel on Sunday mornings. Or, if we did, Dad and Mom looked up the Church of Christ closest to our route and we stopped to worship there.

This morning, we will listen to our congregation’s livestream on the speakers in our car as we cruise down I-65.

This will not be much different from what we did last week or the week before. Since the COVID pandemic started, we “watched church” from home at least five times as often as we “went to church” in person. When the Omicron variant started to burn in our region, we went back to “YouTube...

Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash

In a few weeks, I will stand in the pulpit of a small Church of Christ congregation that invited me to bring them good news.

I asked what kind of good news they want me to bring.

“Unity,” they said.

The good news is that I have some good news about that:

For [the Christ] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it (Letter to the Ephesians 2:14-16).

Parenthetic paragraph: If you can’t make it to hear the good news I will announce to that little congregation in a few weeks, just stop reading this...

Photo by Karl Fredrickson on Unsplash

This is what they call a “long read.”

It’s about church stuff.

Church leaders (and people who care about church) may get the most out of this post. I think, however, that anyone who leads a mission organization may get something from it, too.

I couldn’t stop thinking about something my dad, a lifelong minister (or what you may call a pastor in your circles), said to me a couple of weeks ago.

So I started writing and it turned into this.

You’ll find three parts in this post.

The first part is the story Dad told me about how he made a big mistake that led to his personal collapse and, perhaps, the collapse of the congregation he served for 22 years.

The second part is my take on Dad’s story and how I think many American congregations and their ministers make the same mistake that Dad made.

The third part is a personal story about how I...

Photo by DJ Paine on Unsplash

This morning, I had a random thought about an old friend who came through for me at a time when I needed all the friendship I could get.

I don’t know why I thought of her this morning. Maybe it was the snow falling outside the window. I have good memories of the times she and her roommates hosted me in their home on winter days like this one. They were so generous and kind that I still feel warm all over when I think of them.

Like many friends from long ago, I only keep up with this one through Facebook. Once in awhile, I see her post something about her family and her life and what she is up to these days.

Once in awhile.

Most of what she posts, however, is what I will call passionate opposition to the precautions many people are taking against COVID. She is vigorous in her hostility toward any kind of mask and vaccine mandates.

I do not agree...