In his book The Road to Character, David Brooks raises the following questions in the final chapter: • Toward what should I orient my life? • Who am I and what is my nature? • How do I mold my nature to make it gradually better day by day? • What virtues are the most important to cultivate and what weaknesses should I fear the most? • How can I raise my children with a true sense of who they are and a practical set of ideas about how to travel the......

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Selfishness and self-centeredness abound in our culture, even among Christians. It is why Jesus said, “To become my follower, you must deny self, take up your cross, and follow me.” I often hear people make the case that much of today’s Christianity is not indicative of what Jesus taught and embodied. My good friend and retired minister Rubel Shelly once published an excellent book titled I Knew Jesus Before He Was a Christian… and I Liked Him Better Then. His basic claim is that the Jesus of history and the Jesus of......

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Jon Gordon is an expert on the power of positive leadership.  He learned the hard way that negativity doesn’t work, and he wrote an excellent book called “The Power of Positive Leadership.”  I have enjoyed reading his books, blogs, and hearing some of his talks over the years.  He offers incredible insight and hope to leaders in all different sectors.  We all know that we live in a very cynical and negative world. All of us must make the decision to stay positive when we face adversity.  Mindset and attitude always matter. ......

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Lots of attention has been paid recently to the impromptu revival going on at Asbury University in Kentucky. What began as an ordinary chapel service on February 8 has continued for weeks and has drawn people to the small Kentucky town from all over the nation and world. Why Asbury? Why now? Who knows, but according to many who have traveled there to experience it, God’s spirit is alive and well. We have seen images on the news of people singing, praying, repenting, recommitting their lives to Christ, and drawing together in......

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We begin the season of Lent tomorrow evening with a special Ash Wednesday service in the sanctuary at 6:30 PM starting our forty-day journey toward Easter. Sunday, we start a new sermon series focusing on Mark’s gospel called “WHY JESUS?” In the coming weeks, I challenge you to read Mark’s gospel on your own, in its entirety. It’s the shortest of all four gospels and was the earliest to be written, dating somewhere between 65 to 70 A.D., roughly 35 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The other two......

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Happy Valentine’s Day! For many years, we have had a great tradition at Woodmont of our 5th graders going through the “Disciples Class” leading up to Easter. Other churches call this “confirmation” but in the Christian Church, this is when we baptize our young people into the life of the church. Over the course of about six weeks, we talk to them about faith, baptism, love, spirituality, what it means to be a Christian, making a confession of faith, getting baptized, and becoming a part of the church. This group will make......

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This Sunday, Feb. 5, we will begin a new sermon series on Paul’s short letter to the Colossians called “RELATIONSHIPS MATTER.” Relationships matter in life, but they are complicated and can be challenging. They are the source of great joy, happiness, and fulfillment as well as great pain, heartache, and disappointment. The quality of our lives will always be tied to the quality of our relationships. John Gotttman says that the only empirical evidence in his research between couples whose marriage lasts over the years and the ones that don’t boils down......

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I was recently invited to serve as Chaplain of the Day for the Tennessee General Assembly to open their session. The thought that I shared with our state lawmakers before giving the prayer was this: only one thing can keep you from getting along, deliberating, debating, and working with each other to lead our state. That one thing is having contempt for each other. Contempt has become a great spiritual challenge facing American society at this moment in history. Bill Haslam talks about this in his book Faithful Presence. Harvard professor Arthur......

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