Classic re-post from 2002 If you know me you know I like to tell happy stories about good things. I like to tell stories of love and goodness. I make excuses for celebrations every day. I like to point others to God’s good gifts all around them. I find this especially easy to do when […]
Trouble on the Kokosing Gap Trail
Classic re-post from 2002 “You need to get more exercise,” they said. But when you weigh as much as I did that’s not as easy as it sounds. And on a perfectly innocent-looking day a few years ago it landed me in trouble. I had talked my then thirteen year old son Kyle into a […]
Why Talk About Hell?
Re-posted from 2008 It is unpopular and uncommon in most churches in America to hear a message on Hell. I am going to preach on Hell Sunday morning. It would be a good service to invite people to if you care about their souls. Let’s admit it Hell is not a popular subject, so why […]
You Will Never Find the Bottom
Photo by Bill Fortney Jess was born in a little house back in a remote “holler” in Kentucky. The nearest town was the county seat of Wolfe County–the little mountain town in Eastern Kentucky where my wife Lois was born. Jess married Lois’ grandmother. They met at the Senior Citizens Center there in Campton. It’s […]
Something I Learned in College
The most important lessons you learn will be outside the formal leaning structure. My second fall in college I toured the west with a singing group. Our classroom for three months and hundreds of miles was a bus. We had no privacy. We had to be with the same people for hours at a time. […]
Easter Sunday in America
I have to admit to some quaint ideas. I still feel an inner warmth and get a little misty-eyed when I see a picture of a family walking to church on a spring morning. In these warm fantasies the sun is always shining, birds sing, and the walk is lined with daffodils. The trees are […]