Next Monday 86 volunteers from our church will host Royal Family Kids Camp in Glen Rose. RFKC, as it is commonly called, is a very special camp designed to exclusively reach out to children ages 7-11 who have been abused or neglected. The vast majority of the kids who will attend this year’s camp are in CPS ordered foster care. I ran across a compelling story from a Royal Family Kids Camp that took place in Kansas regarding a little…
I really do believe there is such a thing as a sacred place. I am not really using the term in a profoundly theological manner. I would say that there is such a thing as a special place, but sacred is more descriptive. The campus of Lubbock Christian University is a sacred place for me. I can still go and stand in the very place where I first got to know Jan during the spring semester of 1983. We sat…
Choose your words carefully. You never know what kind of impact that you are about to make in someone’s life. As a minister, I have heard everything. As a police chaplain, I have been called everything. That is a bit of a stretch, but it is not too far off from the truth. People’s verbal reactions to sermons can sometimes be amusing, and other times not so entertaining… A number of years ago a colleague received the following reaction in…
Two pop culture icons of my formative years died on the same day this week: Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Farrah’s famous swimsuit poster sold millions of copies, when it hit peak popularity in 1976. I was a freshman in high school that year. I always wanted one of those posters in my room, but my traditional Southern mother would say in her typical drawl: That poster is just “vulga.” (That is Southern for “vulgar’” by the way.) And then…
In July of 1989, I started anticipating the arrival of my oldest son. Jan was due on July 6th, so I scheduled my vacation to begin that very day. I was under the assumption that babies arrive right on schedule. Why would my male brain think anything differently? The 6th of July came and went. There was no hint of labor pains. There was a dad to be in the house who was on the verge of becoming a pain,…
I celebrated my first Father’s Day in 1990. I just barely missed the cut off in 1989. Randall did not come along until July 15th that year. I wanted the whole world to know that I was a father. I felt like I deserved a discount on my noon meal that day at some local restaurant. It was a big deal for me. I had walked the floor with my young son late at night the previous 11 months, when…
All three of my boys consider themselves to be scholars of the Apostle Paul in Scripture. That is probably a bit of a stretch, but they would be quick to tell you that they sat at the feet of a teacher who described the life and teachings of Paul, as if she were with him on the road to Damascus when he saw the bright light. Her name is Dorothy and she really is a Pauline scholar. Dorothy started teaching…
Cleverly created signs always grab my attention. I saw a great billboard on Loop 820 in Ft. Worth yesterday. The sign advertising McDonald’s Coffee stated: “I am a coffee lover and not a millionaire.” It was an obvious jab at perceived overpriced java at Starbucks. That is good marketing!There is another coffee sign that I am forced to see ever time I make the trip home from Ft. Worth that grabs my attention in a much different way. The temporary…
There have been several prominent news stories recently regarding insurance companies that lack financial solvency. If you are insured with State Farm, you don’t have a thing to worry about. I am paying them enough in car insurance premiums alone to keep them fiscally sound for decades. It is called having two male drivers under the age of 25. I think they must know that a third one is waiting in the wings, and are charging me accordingly. Actually I…
People often laugh at me when I tell them that I spent three years in Muleshoe, Texas. I think they have this image of a Jeff Foxworthy redneck paradise. That of course is the farthest thing from the truth. Muleshoe is a very prosperous agriculturally based town. I moved there after 8 wonderful years serving on the staff at the Tenth and Broad Church of Christ in Wichita Falls. Muleshoe marked my first opportunity to fly solo and be in…