When You’re Brokenhearted and Crushed
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." (Psalm 34:18) Today I had several conversations with friends who are experiencing significant grief and pain from profound and tragic events in their lives. Those conversations always...
Love: The Mark of the Church
The church can be known for a number of things can’t it? It can be known for its care for the poor. It can be known for its moral teaching. It can be known for its liturgical expression. Sadly, it can sometimes be known in a...
Dealing with Unwanted & Intrusive Thoughts
Have you ever had a random thought pop into your head that was so odd or unsettling you found yourself wondering, "Where did that come from?" It may be the thought to make an incredibly cruel or ugly comment. It may be an impression of a vile sexual thought or an...
Resurrection Peace
Imagine you are with the Disciples and it’s Easter Sunday. But you don’t know that because you don’t know Jesus has risen. Not yet. What you do know is that Jesus died. He was betrayed and falsely convicted. He was brutally beaten and whipped. Then he was...
Keeping the Faith at Work
Despite the rise of the work-at-home movement, the vast majority of people spend at least 40 hours per week at work. Many people work upwards of 50 or more hours each week. It is no exaggeration to say that most of our waking hours are spent in the workplace. The...
Tips for Better Bible Reading
Every Christian is called to be a student of the Bible. Yet many Christians struggle with their Bible reading --either in forming the habit or in comprehending what they are reading. Many are like the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. When Phillip comes upon the man reading...
Dealing with Distractions in Prayer
One of the most common questions people ask me in regards to prayer is "How do I handle distractions?" There are times when, in the middle of praying, we find that our minds has wandered. It happens to me. Sometimes I find that I'm thinking about something related to...
The Cross, the Level, & the Truth
Anglican John Stott said, “The cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough to it for its sparks to fall on us.” (Authentic Christianity, IVP, 1995, page 58) The cross is the great leveler of...
Cultivating Peace in the Home
The pace of the modern family can only be described as frantic. Numerous activities, obligations, sports activities, school events, job requirements, and social expectations make constant demands on a family's time and attention. As a result, many of us wrestle with...
Book Review: How to Use the BCP, Bray & Keane
"Cranmer made sure that every service in the Book of Common Prayer proclaims the Gospel --the good news that sinners can be pardoned and saved because of the death of Christ. The prayer book is designed to proclaim the Gospel persuasively." (Bray & Keane 18)...
Developing a Prayer Journal
"I'll pray for you." How many times have we said that to a brother or sister in Christ and forgotten to actually pray for them? It's not intentional. But life is hectic. We get busy. It can be very easy to forget to pray for the people and situations as we had...
Let the Word Live in You
When my wife Sheryl and I started dating in 1991, we had both recently gone through a renewal of our faith. Although we had both been raised in the Church, we hadn't really internalized it or made it a priority. In many ways in the spring of 1991 we were baby...
The Sovereign Goodness of God
Many Christians struggle to understand how to live faithfully in a culture that clearly is at odds with their faith and increasingly hostile towards it. It may come as a surprise to some that this is not unusual or unprecedented. Throughout history God's...
Reclaiming Sunday as The Lord’s Day
Shouldn't Sunday be different for us? Sundays used to be very different. When I was growing up, most everything was closed on Sunday. Malls, restaurants, movie theaters, car washes- everything was closed. In fact, my Dad taught me to drive in a mall parking lot on...
A Priest, A Son, and Saying Goodbye to My Dad
At around 10:20pm on July 3rd of last year, I held my Dad's hand as I watched his vitals on the monitor in his ICU room. I have been at the bedside of many dying people over the years. In fact, I spent the first few years of my ordained life as a volunteer hospital...
Ministerial Advice to My Younger Self
I have now been in ordained ministry for 22 years. It's quite hard to believe. When I was ordained (originally in the Episcopal Church) I was 30 years old. At the time, that made me one of the youngest clergy in the Diocese. I was one the first to be allowed to train...
Men: Sing!
Men, as you go to worship today, please consider the following: SING. If you'll sing the national anthem, or belt out Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" in the car, lift up your voice to the Lord. I know you can sing. I have heard men sing the various "Fight Songs" of their...
The Legacy of the Anglican Reformers
Introduction When I was growing up I never heard the Reformation referenced in Church. I had no idea why the Reformation even mattered. It wasn’t until many years later, through seminary and after, that I began to see the contributions of the Reformers and began to...
Three Favorites of 2023
I love books. This love of reading was fostered by my late father who used to take me each Saturday morning to wander through the aisles and load up on books. This was long before the days of the coffee-shop bookstore giants like Barnes and Noble. We would split-up...
Why is Spiritual Growth Difficult?
It is not unusual for Christians to go through periods of dryness in their life of faith. Sometimes this can be distressing. We may find ourselves wondering if there is something wrong with us, or if our perceived progress in the faith was some sort of self-deception....
Why I’m Grateful for Christian Music
Lately I've been reflecting about growing up in the 1980s. I feel very blessed to have been a kid during the time of Big Wheels, Atari, BMX, Star Wars, and mullets. Well, maybe not the mullets. It was the heyday of the new wave of British heavy metal, hair bands, and...
Humility of Purpose
“Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the...
The Power of “We”
Not long ago a friend of mine said that he didn't like the fact that the Nicene Creed in Holy Communion uses "We". He said, "I don't know if the person next to me believes this or not." I must admit that I was at a bit of a loss for words-- not because it's a hard...
Stability in Unstable Times
John Stott says, “Let the devil mount his fiercest attack on the feeblest saint, let the anti-Christ be revealed and the rebellion break out, yet over against the instability of our circumstances and characters, we set the eternal stability on the purpose of...
(Re)Learning to Love
One of the things I find tiring is sorting through the re-defining of words. I'm talking about perfectly good words that have a solid history and setting in which they have normally been used. On the one hand, it can be annoying, on the other it can be insidious. This...
Hope for Troubled Hearts
One morning as I sipped my coffee, I scrolled through the news stories on my laptop. Most of the storis were the usual procession of one unbelievably bad story after another. Much of it shocking. I felt a tightening in my chest,...
Hope for Anglicans and Anglicanism
Who am I? In the musical adaptation of Les Miserables, there is a poignant scene with the protagonist, Jean Valjean. The former convict, now freed, is trying to come to grips with his past and the potential of his future. In a case of mistaken identity,...
I attended Auburn University on an Army ROTC scholarship and majored in Aviation Management. After graduation, I was commissioned and served at Ft. Sam Houston, TX, and Ft. Campbell, KY. I attended Trinity School for Ministry and, in 2002, served as a church planter with Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee. In 2013, I joined the Anglican Church in North America and St. Patrick’s Anglican Church. I became St. Patrick’s 2nd Rector in 2020.
