In February of 1982 I was hired to be the pastor of a very small (25 people) Bible church in the Dallas area. I pastored that church as I finished the master’s program at DTS and then during my doctoral work. Sharon and I went to Arkansas for a week of vacation the last week

I was speaking about John’s Gospel to a man who was a life-long Baptist and had attended Church for over fifty years. At the time, we were discussing John the Baptist’s Aaronic heritage and how that fit into the meaning of John 1, when I casually mentioned that John was killed before the end of

For most of us, there is a tendency to be impressed when we meet people of accomplishment. The world certainly has its ways of measuring the greatness of individuals. The same thing is true in the Christian world. When we speak of pastors, for example, we often measure greatness by the size of that pastor’s

For many people, there is a strong desire for compromise. We all find ourselves in situations where we do not see eye to eye with others around us. In many of these instances, the other people involved are people with whom we want to have some kind of relationship. Compromise is the way to bring

“For several years he [Martin Luther] read through the whole Bible twice a year, cover to cover. He characterized his reading with phrases like “rapping on it” or “knocking on it” for it to open; he “stormed” it or “tasted” individual verses.”—Thomas Kaufmann, A Short Life of Martin Luther, p 60. The Reformation was fueled

On January 1, 1985 I was asked by the elders of my church to resign as pastor, effective immediately. I did as they asked and wrote a nice resignation letter. Through a strange series of events, Sharon and I ended up going back to that same Bible church four years later. After a time I

Every person wrestles with making decisions. We make decisions every day such as what clothes to where, whether to check social media right now or read the Bible, whether to order fries or Brussel sprouts with a hamburger, whether to eat out in the first place, etc… As well, we all face “larger” decisions at

Allen Rea, a pastor in Georgia, suggested that the repetition of “found” is a play on words by John. I love that suggestion. Notice how it brings the verse alive: “[Andrew] first found his own brother Simon [= Peter], and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated, the Christ).”[1] There are

In June of 1986 I was hired by Multnomah Bible College to teach Greek and Bible. This required a big move from east Texas. We packed all our furniture into a U Haul truck and with the help of Sharon’s parents, Graham and Camille, moved to Oregon. We found the best place to live, Lake

When I went to college I chose to attend a military college. I really enjoyed being there, but there was one major problem. Whenever I and many of my fellow cadets wanted to go downtown, we didn’t want people to know we were military cadets. It was only a few years after the end of