Pretty much everyone knows who Martin Luther King Jr. is, but John Lewis is a little less familiar. Lewis has been a US Congressmen in my part of Georgia since 1987.  He was also one of the major leaders of the Civil Rights movement – one of the few that

[Click HERE for Part 1: The Problem] After years of trial and error, my best answer is, only give to poor people that you know.  Only give to people that you know their story, you know the people they know, and you know their situation beyond just the things they

Part 1 – The Problem Do you know those feelings of uncertainty or even guilt when someone asks you for money?  You want to be a good person, a compassionate person, and beyond that if you are a Christian, you want to obey the teachings and commands of Jesus when

I have an incredible mother-in-law.  Despite the jokes and the crazy stories, they do exist, and I happen to be blessed with one of the best ones.  Her husband, my father-in-law, is the extroverted one and we have enjoyed over fifteen years of rich conversation.  Carol Ann is quieter and

Singing in the dark has been a central and distinctive habit of the Christian life from the beginning.  People of other faith traditions sing for sure, but Christians have the habit of singing loud and long and joyfully, triumphantly no matter the circumstances.  We sing our songs all the more

As the Gallup chart for this post shows, race relations in the United States have tanked in the last few years.  As a minister of a racially diverse church in a racially diverse neighborhood this concerns me a great deal.  This means that white people and black people – at

[This was written after the July 2016 murder of five Dallas police officers and the racial tensions that led up to it.] Despite all the horror and ugliness from this past week, I have seen so much good and beauty.  I have seen black and white friends calling each other

I believe too many of us in the United States have an inadequate view of slavery – and holding onto this inadequate view comes at a high price for our world and for millions of individuals. Slavery is an abhorrent practice where one human being physically and psychologically subjugates another

One day back in college, one of my favorite business professors was doing a lecture on ethics in business when one of the students (most of us were in our late teens and early twenties – just kids really) raised her hand and said that she would never work for

Earlier this week as I was doing some research on Christian history for an upcoming sermon when I came across this fascinating journal article in The New Atlantis by Hillel Ofek.  In a relatively short post, Ofek tackles some pretty fascinating questions: What was the “Golden Age” of Islam? What