Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
A couple months ago, I (Randy) did a 3-week sermon series called, Who’s in Charge? Sermon 1.0 made the point, We grow when we face our storms with faith in God! The reality is, we all face things that cause us fear. When we face them head on, in spite of our deepest fears, it … Read more
Ever since we received the photos of Baby Willis we’ve had this image in our minds. And even before the referral, this message from the future Baby Willis has been a big motivation for us this year. What a year it has been! We went to Asbury in January 2007 to take a dissertation-writing class … Read more
I wrote about parenting as character building a couple days ago. Since then I’ve reflected more on this and I’ve been thinking about the work of character building as the work of shaping a heart. The backdrop for this idea is Reggie McNeal’s book, A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders. God’s … Read more
As we’ve talked with many people over the last year about our adoption process, we’ve received two primary responses: 1) excitement about the prospect of an addition to our family, and 2) certainty that our lives are going to be turned upside down. 🙂 Well, with our adoption process nearing the end, much of our … Read more
A little about our dissertations. So far in our doctor of ministry / dissertation journeys we have not said a whole lot about our specific topics. However, we just noticed that Asbury’s current proposal’s page now lists our dissertation proposal topics: Joleen: The Integrated Small Group: Bible Study, Community, Ministry, and Mission Randy: Leadership Communication: … Read more
Don’t just live a life, leave a legacy! Awhile back, we watched The Ultimate Gift (official movie/movement website). We watched it again while visiting family in Tennessee earlier this week. It’s a great movie with the tag line, “A life experience becomes a gift.” The movie is based on Jim Stovall’s book, The Ultimate Gift. … Read more
While at Asbury for proposal hearings earlier this week, we received an unexpected phone call from our adoption agency informing us that we have a referral for a child! The call was a surprise because we were told to expect a referral much closer to Christmas. The call came on Tuesday, a day after Randy’s … Read more
We both received “provisional passes” on our proposal hearings. As you may know, we were at Asbury in Kentucky this week for our long-anticipated proposal hearings. We both received provisional passes, which basically means that we’ve been given the green light to move forward on our dissertation work but that we both need to further … Read more
The books we want to read have been piling up! If you’ve been following our doctor of ministry journey, you know that our personal growth time has been somewhat tied up. As a result, our reading time/schedule outside of the program is pretty limited. So, as you can imagine, the pile of books that we … Read more
Reflections on our Asbury experience while we’re in Kentucky for proposal hearings. We’re here at Asbury this week for our proposal hearings (more on those in a later post). Once we receive the green light from our dissertation committees, we will each begin our respective ministry projects. We hope to spend the next 2-3 months … Read more