LP's LampPost

I have the great privilege of serving as associate pastor at Union Hill Baptist Church.  I get to preach there quite bit and yesterday I had more sermon than I could get preached!  This blog post is, in part, a continuation of that sermon.  You can listen to the whole thing here  (the sermon starts at 13:20) but I'll give you a quick summary.  Many of us are guilty of evaluating our marriage based on our own happiness.  We can be guilty of considering our spouse's happiness only as it affects our own happiness and we only occasionally consider how God is glorified in our marriage.  To be fair, this last criteria is only a reasonable expectation for Christians but that's who I want to talk to for a minute. God's glory and others' benefit is the primary filter that all our actions should run through to determine whether or not they are good or right.  It is easy, however, to fall into the trap of calling whatever makes me happy good.  Nearly ...

I am reading You Lost Me by David Kinnaman.  This book is a report on research into the "dropout problem" among young adults in Christian churches in America and some prescriptive thoughts for reaching these dropouts and reorienting our churches around the gospel.  It is a challenging read for a church leader and long-time follower of Jesus like myself.  One of the later chapters has especially spurred my thoughts recently.  The chapter is simply titled "Doubt." Doubt is an interesting phenomenon in the life of a follower of Jesus or even in the life of someone who is considering following Jesus.  We spend a great deal of time as preachers and teachers encouraging people to trust God and "exercise" their faith.  All of this encouragement can, and should, be used to deal with our doubts.  It is my experience, however, that we almost never address doubt directly and I spend a lot of time preaching and teaching.  By contrast, I've said and heard s...

Folks who have known me for a while have probably heard me carry on about the "r-word" at some point.  I had no idea that my personal carrying on had a national campaign.  Today is designated as the annual day of awareness for using (or not using) "retarded."  You can learn more at r-word.org (their site is very slow, maybe just today) and I encourage you to check it out.  This is personal to me as I have a 14-year-old son with Cerebral Palsy and severe Developmental Delay.  He is an individual with an intellectual disability.  Retardation is a literal description of a medical condition.  It has come to be used as an insult or joke.  I appreciate you considering eliminating it from your vocabulary.  If you really want to go above and beyond, pay attention to how you use "special" as well.

I was sent an email from a friend last week that contained the story of a football game between Gainesville State High School and Faith Christian High School in Texas.  I have seen several great stories of compassion in the sports world but I'm not sure any of them tops this one.  I encourage you to take about 5 minutes and watch the news story here . Considering that story, I have a few questions. Which side of the ball are you on?  If you feel like you are on the Gainesville State side where no one cheers for you, I would like to tell you something about Christmas.  The baby in the manger was God in the flesh.  One of the overwhelming messages of the life of Jesus is that God is for you.  He knows your name and really wants the best for you.  More than just dividing His fans in half, God Himself chose to break into our world to rescue us from our past mistakes and give us a future.  Like the boys in Gainseville State School, we have to make ...

I serve as a pastor.  I lead our youth group.  I parent 3 children.  I think a lot about how to communicate principles for decision making that are not just "when A happens, you pick B."  At least, I should think a lot about it!  I was up late last night as a result of these kinds of thoughts.  We all are exposed to different environments, saddled with different challenges, and face different choices.  What rules or guidelines will help all of us make the right choice all the time?  Even if I won't choose the right thing all the time, could I at least get some help in knowing what the right thing is? It's tempting here to say something like, "Well just do what the Bible says all the time" or, "Just ask WWJD?"  Here's the problem, I have read the Bible all the way through a couple of times and I haven't found a verse that gives me the script to correct a sensitive child's behavior in a way that let's him know the gravity of the er...

As a child, the brick house on the hill. Moniteau County, Walker Township. On the farm, outside of McGirk (where?!) Not so much the house as the land. Teenager: two girls occupy our home, too. Foster kids, is this home for them? One returns to her home. One stays through college. Still, is this home for her?  Hard to tell. College: "On my own!"  Cool! . . . Not home though. I go "home" on weekends and for summers. A thought is peeking through the clouds, Maybe I was wrong as a child. Maybe home is not the house or the land. Sure feels like home to see Mom and Dad (and Brother?) Her:  Things have changed! On top of the world, looking at spectacular, I want to show . . . her. Why her?  Hmmm. The question.  She said yes! Yep, I was wrong as a child. We make home, she and I. Home is the people not the place. The place is nice, filled with memories (laundry, too). If the people move, so do I. The place becomes a memory. Home moves wi...

While watching the Today show a little while back I was caught by a phrase from Salman Rushdie during an interview with Matt Lauer.  In the interview (you can see it here ), Rushdie opines that we are living in an age of outrage and that "people seem to define themselves by their outrage."  Incidentally, he also describes the internet movie at the center of this controversy in an almost lyrical way as "an outrageous, disgraceful, little malevolent thing."  Poetry. The legitimacy of this outrage on the part of Muslim residents of North Africa and the Middle East is not the discussion I wish to engage here.  How we, as privileged westerners, tend to define ourselves by outrage is the discussion I'd like to take a stab at. Some will object to my use of privileged but only the narrowest of viewpoints will support any other assessment of middle-class citizens of the USA.  People who do not worry about the existence or timing of their next meal and have a dry, tem...