ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: An Accidental Mirror

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. And in case you’ve been in a cave in Afghanistan (some have) for the past few weeks, the internet has been all abuzz with people challenging each other […]

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 […]

The Fox News Channel Wasn’t Good for My Soul

Reposted with permission. Article written by my friend Tim Stevens. On November 7, 2012, I stopped watching the Fox News Channel (FNC). That might not seem like a big deal if you didn’t know that I probably averaged 7-10 hours a week for years. I was a news junkie. I LOVED watching the news, hearing […]

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. […]

Why I Don’t Pray

Allow me a moment of confession. There are seasons and days and moments in my life when I don’t pray. If you’re honest with yourself (and the rest of us), you have also shared such moments and days and seasons. Because we fail to pray does not co-sign us to the pit, but neither is […]

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 […]