

What You Want--Can Kill You!
When I was about 16, I played in a Youth Basketball league. Our team was pretty good and that year, we were on our way to a Tri-Regional championship tournament when I came down with a case of walking pneumonia. Now the thing about walking pneumonia is…you’re still walking when you have it. You feel pretty good, you just don’t have the lung capacity and thus the energy to do what you normally could. “You’re not going anywhere this weekend,” the doctor said, “You’ve got pneum


Dealing with Distraction
One of the fine arts of teaching in African countries is what I call “Preaching with Chickens (PWC).” PWC is the art of staying focused on your message when in a remote village surrounded by many distractions. In the bush, there are children, snakes, dogs, and yes—many chickens to provide distraction as you share God’s Word. The trick is to be able to flow with these and not get sidetracked or overly distracted. In fact, if you learn their rhythm, a rooster crowing can even a


How to HATE Your Church!
If there's one thing I've learned in my 56 years on this planet it's this: HUMAN BEINGS LOVE TO COMPLAIN! Sometimes, we revel in being downright miserable. In fact, we'll even create things to be upset about just so we can then vent to someone! Sadly, while they're supposed to be, Christians often aren't that different--even when it comes to their own churches. Like family, Churches are great targets for critical commentary. As the saying goes, it's kinda like shooting fish


When Things Go Wrong...
When I sold IT software and hardware the running joke around the office was, “Let him describe it, but don’t let him TOUCH it!” I had an uncanny knack of blowing up our products so they wouldn’t work the way they were supposed to. Once, after pulling in some high-ranking executives from Xerox to see a demo of our new state-of-the-art Unix workstations, everything froze. I was giving them the high-level slide presentation while my Systems Engineer worked to prepare the demo in