Raised a Baptist I had no exposure to what I later learned is called the liturgical calendar. We observed Christmas, Easter, Lottie Moon offering for foreign missions, and Annie Armstrong offering for home missions. Anything more would have made us less Baptist and more like our almost-Christian friends the Methodists and Presbyterians. I thought Advent was no more than National Teacher Appreciation Day or Arbor Day. Later, because my father was eclectic, we did attend Presbyterian and Methodist services now and then. I say attended because we always knew this was not real worship. The hymns were different, the pulpit was misplaced and there was no fried chicken, Training Union…

For two summers as a student I took a job in a canning factory. For nine hours every day I stood on a hard concrete floor beside a press stamping out thousands of tin can lids. My job was to inspect the seals, stack them in a metal tube, bag them, put 24 bags in a box, and shove the box down a chute. The constant din of the machinery made any conversation with each other impossible. This was long before the Walkman or iPod so we were left alone with our thoughts for hours at a time. During the 15-minute breaks the talk was about family or sports —…

A big surprise for me when we moved to Tyler was how many people here travel all over the world. I expected a relatively small town in rural Texas to be more isolated and provincial. It remained puzzling until discovering that during the Great Depression there were very few places in the country with a strong economy and liquidity. Tyler was one of them and became an early example of venture capital and private equity. Families invested in properties on every continent and while many people assume the wealth of this community is built completely on oil, a good percentage of the wealth comes from those early investments. In many…

Star Trek lasted only three seasons on television. NBC cancelled it due to poor ratings but the show grew a cult-like following with much of the credit due to Leonard Nimoy’s portrayal of the unflappable Mr. Spock. The fan tributes to Nimoy after his death show that his character on Star Trek has remained a folk hero since the 60’s. While he understood the irrationality of our species and even struggled with his own half-human nature, Spock always said what he thought and was bewildered by how humans complicated and confused issues with emotions — anger, fear, love and attachment. In one episode, he said, “May I say that I…

Most of us are first made to read Shakespeare before we have enough life experience to even partially understand his genius. It wasn’t until I was teaching King Lear in senior English – and had a daughter of my own – before I realized King Lear was so much about his tangled relationship with his daughters and desperate attempt to pass off responsibility without giving up privilege. It was the tragic tale of a father demanding love and honor – things that could only be earned. Years went by and I didn’t reread King Lear until much later when I was co-teaching “The Wise Art of Giving” with Os Guinness…

A cardinal rule of teaching is never open with a line that makes it impossible to say anything more about the topic. That’s especially true if it is a lecture and you have 45 minutes to fill. In a discussion class you can always make the statement and then say “talk among yourselves” for the balance of the time. Of course, I am always suspicious that no one ever talks about the lesson but more likely goes straight to politics, sports or the kids. That’s the predicament I found myself in preparing a lesson on Isaiah 40 and the qualities of God. What can anyone say about the incomprehensible –…

“Thank God the evangelicals are a single issue bloc of voters.  I don’t know what we would do were they not.” My friend, the aspiring politician, had read the tea leaves, put his finger to the wind, and digested all the polls for coming to that conclusion making it easier for him to send the right message. In some areas of his district, he would not even spend money and time campaigning as long as the religious voters knew he was solid on that single issue. Nothing else mattered. Find the one issue about which they were united regardless of their other differences in denomination, worship, theology, and history. Pound…

Instead of destroying a weakened Israel, the Midianites chose constant humiliation by periodically crossing into Israel and reducing them to living in fear – hiding in mountains and caves. And it is in hiding that we first meet Gideon. We know the story. Reluctant to commit with only questions and doubts this is no born general waiting for the opportunity to lead. But God tells him, “Go in the strength you have. Am I not sending you?” What possible strengths does God see in this man in hiding? There is, however, a consistent theme in his life. He is fearful and full of doubts but he obeys. His strength is…

On April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson and Congress declared war on Germany. With the same declaration they created the War Chest and the first charitable tax deduction that allowed individuals to make gifts to help with the war effort and shore up the few institutions whose support would be affected by the war. That decision did not affect many people at the time as fewer than 10 percent of Americans paid taxes, and the top rate was 7 percent. The cost to the government was relatively small as there were few nonprofit organizations and as a way to keep the war from putting an end to those institutions, the…

Almost everywhere you turn – left and right – you will hear or read people saying, “This is a Bonhoeffer moment.” For some, that means standing gallantly against the menace of a right wing authoritarian. For others it calls for champions throwing themselves selflessly against an oncoming socialist regime. It may be forcing the choice between nationalism and Christ as when he said, “The question is really: Christianity or Germanism? And the sooner the conflict is revealed in the clear light of day the better.” Or, perhaps, it is, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.” That’s the thing about Bonhoeffer. You…