Like Elsie and me, many of you go to church on Sundays. We hear messages proclaimed from the pulpit but is your pastor great at preaching? How would you know? What are the qualities of great preaching against which to measure your pastor’s preaching? To find the standard for great preaching, let’s look to the Bible for answers. In Acts 2 we read of one of the greatest messages ever preached. It is the message preached by the Apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost. Preaching to unsaved Jews from all over the known world, the Lord uses Peter’s message to save 3000 souls. It is an amazing message! It also gives us a model of great preaching seldom seen today.

Based on Peter’s Pentecost sermon, all great preaching speaks...

Here comes Christmas, ready or not! I don't know why it always seems to catch me off guard. I depend on Thanksgiving to help me prepare mentally and practically for Christmas, but this year it feels like Thanksgiving got lost in the shuffle. It seems that we jumped straight from October right into the “Holiday” shopping season. The Christmas decorations went up, but the emphasis is not on Christmas. The emphasis is on shopping. Christmas and Thanksgiving are both getting lost.

We need Thanksgiving to help us prepare for Christmas in many important ways. We desperately need to have humble and thankful hearts. When did “Black Friday” become all about getting really good deals and shopping for ourselves? In fact, ...

All of us have heard them. The trite expressions bantered about in the world around us. Here is my Top 10 list of expressions used by the world and my comments on each:

1. “Bigger is better.”

No, better is better. Just because something is big doesn’t mean it is better.

2: ”The More the Merrier.”

See the comment on #1. More of something doesn’t make us merrier. I think of the biography of Howard Hughes, America’s first billionaire. Hughes was married three times yet declared in his biography, “I never knew if any of them loved me or my money.” More does not necessarily mean merrier.

3. “Sex sells.”

Yep, an attractive woman showing some skin on the cover of a magazine or...

Shortly after I was saved while serving in the United States Air Force, a friend in the Baptist church we attended convinced Elsie and me to join the choir. Just so you won’t think it was because of our sterling voices, Elsie and I have “choir voices.” Since there were only 20 or so in the choir, they needed people. We rehearsed every week and sang every Sunday. All special music: solos, duets, trios, came from choir members. It was fun and a great way to serve the Lord. So whatever happened to the choir? Yes, Teen Challenge has a 300 voice choir and several mainline churches have choirs but the choir has fallen out of fashion. Now most evangelical churches have a praise band with singers leading the worship. I’m not...