Church Life
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Marketing the Church with One Word
If you were asked to describe the church with one word, what would you choose? Maybe a better question would be, if you only had one word to try to get people to come to worship with you, which word would you choose? Now, to be fair, that is a very difficult thing to do. The Lord’s Church is a multi-faceted entity and trying to summarize it in one word is tremendously challenging. And, to be sure, we will rarely have only one word to invite a friend a neighbor to worship with us. Recently, though, I saw where a church had tried to do just that. It was on…
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Not Original with Me — Not Inspired — But Food for Thought
Recently, I was looking through some material I have saved in one of the cloud storage systems I use. While I was doing this, I came across the picture of something I remember having under the class on the top of the desk I used when I was preaching for the Central church of Christ in Paducah, Kentucky. I’m not really sure where I got the card on which the material you will read below appeared, but it meant enough to me that it was among the few “treasures” I kept in a conspicuous place. The material I am reproducing here is not, in any way, original with me and,…
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Not Quite 23
When this post is published, Adam and Leah will have celebrated 25 years of marriage the day before. Adam wrote a beautiful tribute to both Leah and God’s institution of marriage. No one could be happier for them or respect that success more than I. I am blessed to be surrounded by many examples of faithful Christian marriages. On the other hand, I was asked to speak recently for our congregation’s newly-formed widows and single ladies group. [Side note: we are looking for a much cooler name!] As someone who fits into the second of those categories because of divorce, I am choosing to share some of what I said to…
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Spiritual Cataracts
The thoughts in this post are the results of a devotional presented recently by one of the men in our congregation. As I talked with him later, I learned that he had never before done anything like this. He also told me that he was very, very nervous. All of that may be true, but all of that did not keep him from presenting some very good thoughts. The short version of what he had to say is that he used a personal experience to make some great spiritual applications. He had recently had cataract surgery. What follows are some observations he made about cataracts (along with some I have…
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When Life Comes to an End
I have spent the last several weeks at the hospital sitting with my only living aunt on my dad’s side of the family while her husband was slowly dying. To say it was difficult would be an understatement. You see, any time you sit at a hospital for extended periods of time is very hard. It was hard to watch him losing his battle with illness, and it was hard to watch my aunt losing her husband of 64 years. They never had any children and were totally devoted to one another. As we watched his life slipping away day after day we began to talk about what he had done in…
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How to Frustrate Church Leaders on a Sunday Night
By “Sunday night,” I am not talking about the Sunday evening worship assembly. In fact, the term “Sunday night” is meant as a placeholder for anytime after worship services are finished for the day. It stands for the next time one of those faithful men who serve a congregation as an elder or as a preacher jumps on social media. Maybe they are just scrolling through Facebook to kill a few minutes before going to bed on Sunday night. Maybe they are checking their feed as part of their Monday morning routine. But it’s whenever they are on again and just seeing how things are going. Want to frustrate them?…
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Another Look at Being Blinded by the (Wrong) Light
Some who read this may have read a previous post of mine that dealt with what I believe may be a danger for those of us who preach and teach God’s word. The short version of what I wrote then is that there is the possibility that the fact that we are often “in the spotlight” can distort our message, our lives, and our eternal destiny. This post is intended to “shed some light” (pun intended) on another dangerous issue. There are those who attempt to influence others by dazzling them with their personalities, their oratorical skills, impressive Hollywood style productions, and a host of other things. Those who experience their…
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Episode 170: Central Diggers: The Nuts and Bolts [Podcast]
https://media.blubrry.com/faughnfamily/content.blubrry.com/faughnfamily/Central_Diggers_Classes_A_Legacy_of_Faith.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS (Player not displaying or working? Click here.) This week, Leah and Mary Carol walk you through the ins and outs of Central Diggers.
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The Last Day
On the day this post is being released, it will be the end of the academic year for our homeschool in 2023-2024. This one, though, is one we have seen coming from the beginning, because this is Mary Carol’s final last day of high school. (It is also her last day of homeschool…there’s no way Leah is going to homeschool her through college!) I don’t write this post to be overly sentimental. I write it as a reminder to us all: when you are around people, remember that they all have things on their minds–things that are affecting them–that you may not know. I have noticed that, as this day…
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Blinded by the (Wrong) Light
Most who read this will be at least somewhat familiar with the experience that a man who was then known as Saul of Tarsus had as he traveled from Jerusalem to Damascus. If you are not familiar with this, you can read the original account recorded in the ninth chapter of Acts and recounted later by the man who was then known as Paul in the twenty-second and twenty-sixth chapter of that same book. Saul was making that trip in order to imprison and/or punish Christians. All of that began to change when Saul saw an extremely bright light. The light was so bright that Saul lost his eyesight for…
