Open door, cluttered minds

He sat at the next table, but I could tell he was trying to listen in on our conversation.  He was leaning back in his chair with his Turkish chia in one hand and a cigarette in the other.   At that moment, I was at the adjacent table carrying on a cultural exchange with six college students from the local university.   The five Turkish men at my table, and one female from Bulgaria,  had...

Serving up Jesus Sandwiches in Joplin

They are more than numbers…they are people.  Though the number of deaths continue to climb to over 130, and the number of missing falls below 200, each number is a person.  That’s what we have to remind ourselves again and again.  They are a body, soul and spirit, each one.  GPC and the teams that our going up to Joplin daily are doing more than moving heaps of trash, they are...

Mobilizing the Church (Pt 2)

To pick up from my last blog (nearly 2 months back- warn you that I am not a regular blogger).  However, this topic of mobilizing a church to be on mission is a passion of mine.  I get a lot of  inquires on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ GPC remains missionally focused.  The only way I can say that GPC stays missional is that I as a pastor have to seek to remain personally...

New Years resolutions for a new you

Go ahead be intentional!  It’s okay.  You can do it.  Ninety million people will make new years resolutions this year.1  The term “resolutions” has lost its sticking power in people’s lives, many will choose a different word to describe their “resolutions.”  Seventy-eight percent of the people who made new years resolutions in 2010 said it had little to no...

Dave Ramsey vs. Africa

How you comin’ on your 6 month emergency plan?  Yeah, us too.  Lori and I have learned a lot from Dave and still tune in.  However, when we lived and worked in Africa we had the hardest time getting our brothers and sisters to understand some of the biblical truths on financial management, particularly saving money for the future needs they might have. Gallup recently released a study on...