Category: Various

Christina reminded me the other day that the first Valentine “present” that I gave to her was a NLT Bible. How spiritual huh? Ha! I guess I directed her to the 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a passage in a little Post-It note inside the Bible. Wow… that was like 12 years ago when we were courting. I […]

Several weeks ago, I lost something on the plane. I took it out of my bag and placed it near my chair so that I can use it later. But in the midst of being engrossed in a book, I forget about it. It wasn’t until I was packing things up for my trip to […]

I am excited about our congregational meeting tomorrow. There are a lot of things that we, as a church dream to do… But without God’s help and God’s people, we will never get there. I hope all of you who are participatory members (signed HMCC covenant) will come out and join us. We will give […]

I am getting ready to head out to Chicago to finish off our relationship series. Last Friday, I talked about the purposes of marriage. Today, I am going to address the practical principles of relationships. Once again, relationships are not the easiest thing to navigate through… it is complicated and sometimes just straight out confusing. […]

Once someone asked me why I don’t check in my luggage when I fly… even when I go on missions, I try to bring everything on as carry on. I think sometimes it is motivated by efficiency. Life is short… I do not like to waste time “waiting” for my luggage to come out. Also, […]

I was reading Max Lucado’s meditation on the Lord’s Prayer this morning and it reminded me of some simple truths. From Lucado’s book, The Great House of God, he writes, Our Father [Thank you for adopting me into your family.] who is [Thank you, my Lord, for being a God of the present tense: my […]

Due to the cold fridge weather, the Ann Arbor school system closed school for another day. This is now 2 days in a row. Wow! I remember when I was younger, we would have to go to school no matter what – yes, even in blizzards and freezing temperature. What has come of our generation […]

Monday nights are special. After a long weekend of ministry, I can chill with “24” and spend some time with Christina. We all need some down time and also find some things that will refresh us. I am realizing that as you get older, the simple things are all you need.

The pastoral staff and our Directors of Programming people usually like to come up with the whole year’s preaching schedule before the school year starts. I know that some people are not in favor of this because it seemed too planned and we are not allowing the Holy Spirit guide us from week to week. […]

Observation: The more you are invested, the greater the lost and greater the pain. We ended up borrowing a TiVo machine from someone so we can watch the game in semi-real time. We were able to finish off our Sunday Celebration and have people come over to Peter’s place. We were about 2 hours behind […]

I was a bit bummed that I could not make it to the Praise Night yesterday. This was the first Praise Night in 10 years that I missed. After talking with one of the pastors, I heard it went well. I can’t wait to see it on DVD. Sometimes I want to clone myself and […]

        If there is any topic that I end up counseling people the most on as a pastor is the topic of opposite-sex relationships. Many of us want a relationship that will lead to marriage and last for the long haul. But it is not so easy. If there is an issue […]

The last time my Chicago Bears have been to the Super Bowl was in 1986. I still remember it as if it was yesterday. How can we forget the personalities of “The Fridge” and Jim McMahon? Also, the classic music video they made called, The Superbowl Shuffle (click here to watch). Guess what? Christina had […]

This morning I opened up my inbox to find a link to a video. I clicked on to it and waited for it to download. I wasn’t sure what to expect because it was titled, “ripples.” But as I watched the video it moved me and encouraged me. A small group in our church decided […]