What You Probably Never Knew About Robin Williams

The answer to this title… anything. For the last few days I have read and heard pontifications surrounding the unfortunate death of Robin Williams. The fact is that a very minute number of those same people knew anything about him. Most of us only knew his persona. So for anyone to draw “certain” conclusions about […]

Family First

I have used this saying for years as an out-loud declaration of what I believe in my heart… and now my typical honesty. As you will readily see by the picture, physically getting family together is not always easy. I think the last all-together McQueary time was 2009. That’s not what “family first” is about (only). […]

The Stickers That Saved My Life

Before we begin, no, I don’t believe the stickers literally saved my life. And, no, I am not even talking about my physical life. However, none of that makes any part of my story any less true. Recently a new friend of mine learned that I had been a church planter and that our church closed. […]

Community: Subterranean Oasis

In my writing (and living, for that matter) I am often reminded that I take for granted the parts of my experience that I have forgotten. In other words, as I approach a given subject I am naturally inclined to view it from where I stand today. The problem with that is forgetting the steps […]

Community: The Deep End of the Pool

Often in conversations about following Jesus I hear Christians say things like, “I just want a deeper experience.” They are so right to want that. I believe that in most cases the “deeper” that people want is not the “deeper” that Jesus wants. What I have observed is that when people say “deeper” in the […]

Community: Natural Connections

This post is not about forming a small group Bible Study… though that did eventually happen. This is about making natural connections with people. This post is not about a bait and switch… i.e. forming friendships with people only so that you can proselytize them later (probably sooner). This post is about making natural connections […]

Living In Community

My steadfast belief is this… God created us for togetherness. It certainly begins with what has historically been referred to as the communion of saints (those who believe in and follow Jesus). My further belief is that we were also created to share life with those with whom we may share little more than geography. […]

You Can’t Spell USA Without Jesus

Oh, wait… there’s no “a” in Jesus. Well there is in the Hebrew version… Yeshua. There you have it… USA! USA! USA! All joking aside, churches have often confused patriotism and pietism. They are not the same. Perhaps somewhat ironically, I am actually ok with both patriotism (to appropriate degrees) and pietism. Where I get […]

Scrapping My Plans

We were asked to write in my senior yearbook about what we thought we’d be doing years down the road. I don’t remember the assigned numeric value of said reach. Of course answers ranged from silly to sillier with a dash of serious. Without searching through dozens of boxes for the exact words, I can […]

An Eye for An Eye

Comedian Ron White hails from the great state of Texas. Part of his routine includes a bit about the death penalty… That’s right, if you come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back. That’s our policy. That would be funny, except that it isn’t. Most of us do not need any convincing […]

Throw Like A Girl

“You throw like a girl” is a rude and derogatory phrase that is most often meant as an insult to women. Even when it is given in biological context (as it is HERE), it still reeks of male condescension. On this Mother’s Day I’d like to turn the phrase on its head. Of course there are […]

Love Exceeds Polarity

The so-called law of attraction postulates that like attracts like. For centuries this was presumed to be so and certainly there is truth to it. Fast forward to 1950 and a sociologist named Robert F. Winch introduces a theory that “opposites attract”. There is sufficient data to prove that at any given moment both may […]