You know that feeling when something you’ve been planning for, working on, and waiting for finally arrives? Maybe it’s a surprise party for a friend. Maybe it’s a project at work? Maybe it’s a vacation you’ve been arranging for your family or the wedding you’ve been helping to plan with one your kids? Whatever it is, that feeling of anticipation edging finally over into consummation is incredibly sweet. I had that feeling last night when the all new Working Preacher website was debuted. What, you may be thinking, all this excitement about a website? Well, as a matter of fact – yes! 🙂 About seven years or so ago I had...

It’s snowing here. Yes, 4-5 inches of slushy, wet, heavy, but still very cold snow fell last night and today making a mess of driving, public transportation, and flights. And it’s April 11th. Some friends and I have agreed that the best way to deal with this is to trick ourselves into thinking it’s really late February, not mid April. But I when I stumbled upon this short video of a rather creative promotional by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam’s famous art museum, I found another way: humorous diversion. The museum, eager to promote it’s re-opening, staged a recreation of one of native son Rembrandt’s famous paintings, “The Night...

Best known, perhaps, as the cohost of PBS’s long-running Sneak Previews (later changed to Siskel and Ebert and the Movies), Roger Ebert was many things. The first Pulitzer Prize winning film critic, he was also a profound commentator on culture and politics, an incredibly astute observer of human nature and, ultimately, a candid memoirist and cataloguer of the human spirit. His very well written autobiography, Life Itself, began with this wonderful metaphor drawn from his lifelong love affair with film: I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not...

When is the last time you heard a sermon on depression? Or for that matter heard anything about depression or other mental illnesses even mentioned in a sermon? I ask because I read this morning of the death of Rick and Kay Warren’s son Matthew of an apparent suicide. Matthew, 27 years old, had long suffered from bi-polar disorder and, as part of that, suffered from intense periods of depression that included suicidal impulses. The Warrens’ response to this heart-breaking tragedy has been forthright and faithful at a time when most of us would want only to huddle together in grief. My heart breaks for them even as I admire their grace...

I found the results of a recent poll about patterns of reading the Bible fascinating, discouraging, and not unexpected all at the same time. In short, the survey, conducted by the Barna Group on behalf of the American Bible Society, discovered that while Americans have a very high view of the Bible, they don’t read it much. As an article put out by the Religious News Service describes it, More than half of Americans think the Bible has too little influence on a culture they see in moral decline, yet only one in five Americans read the Bible on a regular basis, according to a new survey…. The survey showed the Bible is still firmly rooted...