Southern Baptists, there is something we need to recognize, even if we don’t want to and we don’t like it. Right now, we don’t have the greatest reputation outside of our own circle. I’m not a critical outsider. I am a Southern Baptist. I’ve attended a Southern Baptist Church for...

Let’s fight. Or not. There are a thousand things to get mad about in today’s world, and the almost instantaneous and twenty-four news cycles and onslaughts of social media throw these things in our face constantly.  If we’re not careful and prayerful, these controversies ignite anger, division, and broken relationships...

This article first appeared in our weekly newsletter in 2019.  I’ve updated it for 2024. I had a good question posed to me this week. “What makes your church different than any other church?” I want to answer it carefully, for I never really like to compare our church to...

This Sunday, January 21, 2024, is Sanctity of Life Sunday.  Because I preach through Bible books like I’m doing now with Proverbs, I don’t focus my preaching on the various “special Sundays” on denominational calendars.  There are simply too many special Sundays to cover, and we would simply go from...

I want to tell you a love story tonight.  It’s the greatest love story that ever occurred and I want you to know it.  No other love story—and there have been thousands of them lived and written about and portrayed in movies—comes close. It’s greater than the love story of...

Most people have heard the story of the Good Samaritan.  It may be the most widely known of all of Jesus’ parables. What you may not know is that the story was particularly and even purposely offensive to the religious leaders of Jesus’ day.  The “experts in the law,” the “priests,”...