Whenever I tell my story of how I got into ministry, I always include Let's Start Talking as part of this story. My dad left a very profitable career in industry when I was 14 years old to go to Oklahoma Christian University and help start the electrical engineering program there. It was a sacrifice, but one which my parents willingly made. They wanted to…

An article came out today on Time.com entitled "5 Reasons Borders Went Out of Business." Here is the article below. Under each point I make some commentary on how Borders' problems in some ways are paralleled in the church. My comments are in italics.





Forty years ago, when Borders opened its first store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the book industry was a different…

Today I met one of our shepherds, Bill Green, at Starbucks. We often get together to pray and study through the passage of Scripture that I'm preaching on. This Sunday I'm preaching on John 5:1-14. Here is the story:

In order to be able to share our faith, we have to be able to talk about our faith. Ironically, however, the best way to share our faith is to ask others about their faith and spiritual journey--and listen! Jesus was a master at this, as shown in his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.

I found the following spiritual conversation starter questions at http://home.snu.edu/~HCULBERT/assess.htm. See what…

In his new book, The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting, Aubrey Malphurs summarizes research by Win Arn on average drive times of those "going to church" (attending a worship service). The average drive times are:



- Less than 5 minutes - 20%

- 5 to 15 minutes -…

This Sunday I am speaking from John 4 and the story of the woman at the well. In this story, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman who is ostracized from her community, going to draw water in the heat of the day.

Jesus is able to engage this woman in a spiritual conversation that so impacted her that she went back and told her whole village about Jesus. And they came to believe that Jesus was the Savior of the World because of this woman's testimony--which is ironic, for as a…