Free Grace Conversations

Around that time, I was invited to judge a graphic design project at Kilgore College. My dad had taught advertising and design there for about twenty-five years. He often would invite media professionals to come to the college and critique the student's work. That added a real-world feel to the presentation of the student's design […]

When I was a high school sophomore, I directed a short film called Janitor Wars. It was a spoof of Star Wars set in a high school. Two janitors battle for dominance with mop handles aided by the force. My team and I won the first-place state-wide award. In the years that followed, I had […]

I slid into my unassigned seat for my 8:00 AM evangelism class. I like to think I was more excited about this class than anyone else there. I assume that many of the students had to take it as part of their core curriculum. For me, this was my one class, and I had handpicked […]

I needed answers. I had lived with a theological limp for years. Bible college worsened the hobble. Being in ministry meant that I had to hide the hitch in my step. I had one last hope. I imagined, as naive as it may seem, seminary would be the hospital that could finally apply the healing […]

There were a handful of illustrations and analogies that I had picked up during my youth ministry days. I had used these clever-sounding parables at the climax of sermons and Bible lessons. They were part of my shiny tool kit of preacher sayings. They had aroused interest and intrigue from my audiences, but the gilding […]

Most of the friends I had were either in music or youth ministry. Some of them were in both. I had a buddy who had taken a ministry job at a church one town over. He was primarily a music minister, but he was good with students as well. He had never studied at seminary […]

For a semester, I attended a university in Dallas. Living on campus was incredibly lonely since most of the students I met during the week were commuters. My dorm was a closet-sized room with three stinky college students crammed inside. Our bathroom was shared by six. Consequently, I spent long hours alone on the edge […]

In the corner of the Bible Belt, where I grew up, there was this pervasive idea that faith equals fervor. Disregarding the fact that the two words have entirely separate etymologies and semantic domains, the cohabitation of these two terms never seemed all that questionable to my developing mind. In practice, it merely meant that […]

"If you can't feel the presence of God in this place, you should check your spiritual pulse!" I heard a sweating revival preacher say once. It frightened me. I was not all that moved by his preaching antics, which seemed surprisingly similar to a red-faced temper tantrum. I had known since I was a child […]

When we got back into Cesis with the bus full of teens, there was an electric buzz in the air. On the way back, we talked to the kids about being baptized. It was the next logical step. They loved the idea and so we excitedly made plans to baptize the twenty-one who had spoken […]