From My Heart and Mind

I asked my wife to marry me on the corner of Imperial Highway and Wilmington Ave. in Compton on Friday, December 20th, 1985 at 5:30 pm.  That's almost thirty years ago, why do I remember it so clearly?  Well,  I graduated from Talbot Seminary that same evening.  It was my Dad's birthday.  It was the Friday before Christmas and I was desperate.  I had arranged a graduation party and an engagement celebration with about 150 people expected.  The problem was I had not proposed to Sallie yet! Back up.  Sallie had been studying nursing in Alaska that fall semester.  She was scheduled to arrive back in Los Angeles on Wednesday, December 18.  My plan was to meet her at the airport and take her to that super nice, "dinner-in-the-round" restaurant suspended in the middle of LAX.  It was super expensive if I remember correctly and I was a super poor graduate student.  But I had saved my pennies and had a plan.  I had arranged for a plate to be designed that said, "Will y

When we came to Las Vegas in the summer of 2000, one of the first things I did was to attempt to reach out to other Pastors and Leaders in the Las Vegas valley.  It has been a remarkable blessing.  (Young leaders take note:  networking with other leaders will be worth 100x the time you put into reaching out.  Do NOT follow the example of many leaders of sticking to themselves, believing too much in yourself and your ways and missing the blessing of knowing and learning from others).   In fifteen years I have never had a Pastor/Leader blow me off.  Even though we came here to plant a church, no one seemed threatened by us or in competition.   So here are some specific praises for specific leaders.  I am so afraid I am going to forget somebody!  In some but no particular order: Shane Philip, The Crossing .  Shane was speaking at Central Christian on a Sunday morning at their new Henderson campus in the spring of 2000 when we were figuring out if we should even come here and I reached

I grew up in Anaheim, California.  We lived in three different places during my childhood but all within a couple miles of Disneyland.  When we first moved there, I could literally throw a baseball onto the hotel property.  I went to the three schools closest to Disneyland-- Palm Lane, Ball Jr. High and Loara High School. Of course, as a kid you don't always realize the significance of things.  I didn't know that I was growing up in a really great place because I didn't know any different.  We would go to the beach once a week in the summer, we would play "ditch" in the summer in our neighborhood and then watch the Disneyland fireworks at 9 pm and afterwards we knew it was time to go home.       I have often been asked, "Wow, if you grew up next to Disneyland, then you probably went all the time?"  No, not really.  Disneyland was (and even more now) expensive and I grew up in a broken home.  I probably went as often as any other kid in southern Cali

February 11, 2015 Dear Brian,    You don't know me but I have watched the agony that you have had to go through this last week with great sympathy.  I had my own life-crushing disaster about five years ago and I watched from afar the train wreck that you are having to experience.  If you are like me you are saying to yourself, "This can't be happening."  "These things happen to other people."  "What am I going to do now?" And a thousand other questions mostly difficult to bring to total consciousness. We are similar.  We are both the same age.  I have you by two months-- 3/3/59.  I assume you are class of 77 also.  I hope you didn't have to wear a leisure suit to your junior high graduation like I did or at least you threw away the pictures!  We got to be the first ones to hear Elton John, Boston and Queen.  Music was great when we were kids.   And you are far more successful than I have been, at least in most people's eyes.  You ha

In the fall of 2009 I started working for myself. No salary guarantee. No regular paycheck. And it was in the depth of the recession. Scary times. But here we are in 2015 and I am alive. God provided. I am still married and we have money in the bank. We pay out of state tuition to one of America's best universities. We are not "rich" by American standards but we are ba-zillonaires by the standards of most of the world. Since only 10% of the world's population own a car and we have uh, several....yeah, we are ba-zillionaires. During these times of uncertainty I had to rely on God a LOT. I studied the scriptures to claim God's promises of provision. As I read this week's reading in The Story of God's provision to Elijah I thought again about how God's provides: Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to