I wrote recently about my wife and I taking our children on a series of spiritual field trips to various churches. Having started by visiting a Greek Orthodox church, we thought we would take our second field trip to the most user-friendly form of Christianity in our culture, a seeker-sensitive mega church. The church we visited has ten worship...

Respect is a word you hear a lot these days. Rich people command it; young people thump their chests and demand it; and old people complain if they don't get it. We need money and sometimes we want power, but our egos crave respect as much as our hearts crave love. Disrespect is so universally hated that the noun itself doesn't carry enough power to...

When I was 16, a man in our church offered me a job for the Christmas holidays. A local department store needed extra help, and he wanted to hire me to sell small appliances there.  I was surprised at the job offer because I knew absolutely nothing about small appliances. I made milk shakes with my mother's blender on occasion and used a hair dryer in...

In the summer of 1974, just after I completed the sixth grade, my father came home with a box of business cards for me. They read: Gordon AtkinsonLawn Care497-2862 I thought it was pretty cool to be 12-years-old and have my own business cards. But when he told me that I had to walk around the neighborhood passing them out, I must admit that my...