My dad grew up in a Texas sharecropper’s shack during the Great Depression. He was barely a teenager when the “Grasshopper Wars” began. The winged insects darkened the sky like storm clouds, swooping down on crops and stripping them to stubble. Driving turned dangerous as the roads became slick with...

In seminary, I was a youth pastor. Every summer during this time, I served as a volunteer at high school church camp. Those were halcyon days spent in small groups, worshipping under the stars, eating junk food with no regret and climbing  “The Mountain,” a cedar-cloaked bluff topped with a...

The National Week of Repentance, launched by Pastor Michael Anthony, has begun. The movement’s website states that its purpose is to start “a revolution of humility and courage…the “only things that will overcome the arrogance and fear that have become so pervasive in our society.” The closing days of the National Week...

No one really knows the exact origins of Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent.  A ritual for the “Day of Ashes” is contained in an 8th-century church document, but we know the influences for this solemn observance stretch all the way back to Old Testament times. Here are three...

  Read Joel 2:1-2; 12-17  My dad grew up in a Texas sharecropper’s shack during the Great Depression. He was barely a teenager when the “Grasshopper Wars” began. The winged insects darkened the sky like storm clouds, swooping down on crops and stripping them to stubble. Driving turned dangerous as the...

    As I prepare to portray Judas on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday at two churches, I am struck again by the King James translation of Matthew 27:3-4: “Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces...

With Ash Wednesday, the shadowy journey of Lent has begun. Lent is a season that doesn’t bring warm fuzzies like Christmas or Easter. You’re not going to find a Hallmark card wishing you an Awesome Ash Wednesday or a Luscious Lent. It’s 40 days of dust, ashes, temptation, self-denial, gloom,...

I suppose when you think of plays that carry a spiritual punch, Footloose the Musical doesn’t pop into your mind. I felt the same way–and then I was cast in the role of Rev. Shaw Moore at the Artisan Center Theater in Hurst, TX, the role that John Lithgow made...