That famous Southern humorist Lewis Grizzard once said "Yankees don't understand that the Southern way of talking is a language of nuance. What we can do in the South is we can take a word and change it just a little bit and make it mean something altogether different." Ha!...
"We must speak out! We CANNOT be silent! Silence makes evil possible!" We hear this a lot nowadays, and I confess, I have great sympathy for this message. I'm a preacher, after all. And the public and fearless declaration of the Gospel is normal for we Christians through history. But,...
We are at 90 Patrons with a few days left to reach our goal! Are you 1 of the 100? There are several levels of support that can fit almost any budget. A gift of as little as $5 a month can help us grow Faith Encouraged Ministries by helping...
St. Anthony the Great once said "A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.'" Of course, that "time" St. Anthony warned us about has been with us...
Listen to this quote from St. Peter of Damaskos: “Patient endurance kills the despair that kills the soul; it teaches the soul to take comfort and not to grow listless in the face of its many battles and afflictions." Wow, "the despair that kills the soul." How often have I...
I had no choice. He was actually a very good man and a very prominent man in the community. But he had made the entire community a slave to his schedule. He was a wonderful volunteer and had become the "go to" guy for the community for years. But...
Why do people stop practicing the faith? Why are we seeing so many young people abandon the faith of their youth? Countless studies have been done trying to answer this question. Every time I travel to speak around the country in parishes big and small, I get asked this...
"We are of one mind about this." I heard his words and I understood each word and it's meaning, but I had never heard this put this way before - "of one mind." What did he mean? But, hey, I was a kid of 22 and the situation was...
You've met them. They are the ones who always seem to have a criticism of how things are going AND they don't jump in to assist, they just want to complain. Truth be told, I've caught myself doing the same thing. Isn't it amazing how much insight into a problem...
A wise leader was teaching a group of "leaders to be" and he made a provocative statement " When someone comes to you and asks for permission to do something in the organization, let your answer always be 'yes.'" Yes? Yes! In my years of ministry, both as a Protestant...
