The Homiletics Online Blog
One Sunday recently, a youngish man, thirtysomething, father of two girls, asked me if the communion bread had any nuts. “We have some nuts in the congregation,” I said, “but not in the bread.” He smiled graciously at this lame attempt at humor. I went on to say that I would confirm this and would…
Playing the drums has been a lifelong passion of mine. From the time I picked up my first pair of sticks and a rubber practice pad in elementary school, I have been fascinated with making the sticks bounce, learning the rudiments and eventually transitioning to a secondhand drum set my mom had purchased from a…
The shooting that took place Saturday, October 27, at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, was, like all of the mass shootings we live through, an assault by hatred upon hope. I say hope, because most people of goodwill, and certainly people of faith, live with hope and by hope. Every day in Pittsburgh…
As someone with a passion for history, I’ve always been interested in genealogies. Maybe it’s because as an adopted child with no knowledge of my birth parents, I’ve always been chasing my own history —where my family originated, what the stories are, etc. Some recent developments have helped, however. I managed to get a copy…
We’re coming up on the two months of the year which unequivocally call for more gratitude, rejoicing and celebration than any other 61-day period on the calendar: November and December. The clarion call to be grateful is issued on Thanksgiving Day, and thereafter we’re reminded of the arrival of the transcendent, ineffable God in human…
This interview was from the March-April 2006 Issue of Homiletics David Allen is an international author, lecturer and founder and president of the David Allen Company, a management consulting, coaching and training company. In the last 20 years he has developed and implemented productivity improvement programs for over a half-million professionals in hundreds of organizations…
Every season has its own particular glory, and with that, downsides, too. Summer has so much to commend it that there’s no need for me to restate the obvious. But there are negatives that deserve mention. In the summer, wrote the Bard, “sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his…
During my days as a youth pastor, I worked at a camp each summer where every time the camp director rose at the end of a meal to give the campers some new information for the day, the kids would break out into a song: Announcements, announcements, announcements: A terrible way to die, a terrible…
This interview was from the January-February 2007 Issue of Homiletics The Family Connections program was developed over a number of years by Barbara Carnal, a licensed professional counselor specializing in family life, and a parent of birth, step-, foster and adopted children. Barbara serves as an ordained deacon at the First Presbyterian Church of Hilton…
My colleague Bob Kaylor is on sabbatical this summer. You can read about it in this issue on page 7. I think he’s doing something important — for himself, his ministry and his church. He will be a better person for it. Let’s talk about sabbaticals for a moment. I read an article recently the…
