“Nothing is everything” might ring a bell from the Skyrizi commercial. It’s a prescription drug to treat moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.[1] Drug-naming, really branding is more accurate, is a multimillion-dollar industry especially since the advent of “ask your doctor if ___ is right for you” took over the airways which is only legal in the U.S. and New Zealand. Ask your doctor why. Nondenominational churches share the branding problem with drug companies. Continue reading
Nothing is Everything – Visit to Grace Covenant, Austin, Texas
Posted in Contemporary Worship, Missouri Megatrends
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500th Post
I ended up preaching about 2,800 sermons, and they are longer than your average blog post. This is the 500th blog post. I was goaded to start this blog in 2007. A member came back from the Lutheran Church Misery Synod’s national convention saying that my voice has got to be heard. Another member, about that same time, said that he wanted to know what I thought about synodical issues more than any other pastor. So it being hard to kick against goads, I started posting. Continue reading
Posted in Families, Missouri Megatrends
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Bible Translations “Visually” Compared
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Is it Not Kicking the Dog or is it Rising Above Them?
This blog was written years ago just after the Covid dust began to settle. Now, 2024, I’m reading King Cholera, a 1966 “biography” of the disease that consumed England beginning in the early 1830s and lasted to the 1860s. O how I wish I had read this prior to Covid. The exact same sides, arguments, accusations, conspiracies, and vilifying of positions was done then, and I now suspect is done in every pandemic, plague, or epidemic. Continue reading
Posted in For Anyone who dares, For Pastors Only
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Draft Our Daugthers
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Dig This
“You’ve been thinking about dying? Dig this” is a great line from a great song from a great R&B group. Their answer to the posed question of thinking about dying not so much. It is to remind yourself “Everybody plays the fool sometime/ There’s no exception to the rule.” Continue reading
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How’s This for Cold?
In the bygone years of pre-internet, you only knew something if you read it or someone in authority told you it. I knew the expression “cold as a witch’s tit” and “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey”; growing up in Michigan everyone did. I thought they had some vague but real reference to sexuality. Continue reading
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“Have You Ever Helped Split a Church?”
That’s the first line of Joel Belz’s op-ed piece in the July 17, 2021, WORLD Magazine (“Menders or splitters?”, 8). You might not have before, but it’s highly likely you’re about to. And it will be over the equivalent of meat sacrificed to idols. Continue reading
The Song May Remember When but the Internet NEVER Forgets
Trisha Yearwood’s 1993 song referenced above is deserving of an extended quote and better still a listen. I figured out how to add musical media so give it a listen. If not, these are the opening two stanzas. Continue reading
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The Brother’s Grimm Couldn’t do Better
In the Brother’s Grimm oft told tale, The wolf knows he’s a wolf; Red Riding Hood knows he’s a wolf, and grandma does too, but the latter two are swallowed whole by the first in no time. And if you don’t see the wolf of women’s ordination is fast closing, you too will be swallowed. The Brother’s Grimm couldn’t set this up any ‘better’ Continue reading