Ken

Typically, when strange but true news stories surface, there's a good chance it happened in California. I'm not sure of the exact odds, but they're pretty high. That's what makes this story so fascinating -- it actually happened in Memphis and not in San Francisco.A 60-year-old man is charged with paying a mother to have sex with her 8-year-old daughter. That alone is bizarre enough. But the man was scheduled to be arraigned in a Shelby County court ... and the presiding judge is his fiance! That conflict of interest was quickly resolved when all of the General Sessions judges in Shelby County recused themselves because of the relationship.The accused guy is an employee of the Shelby County's Sheriff's Department and used his fiance/judge as a reference when he applied for the job. Newspapers have reported that he was not only engaged to the judge, but they were living together…

This entry is being posted from an "undisclosed" Starbucks location. I'll only say that it's somewhere in East County. I'm not sure if it's location, time of day, or just luck of the draw ... but I'm surrounded by some of the strangest collections of people ever gathered in one Starbucks. Even typing that doesn't seem very pastoral, but it's true. And if they knew I was a pastor ... they'd think I was the strangest one of all.

Sometimes the Christian life is portrayed as a dry and dull routine of staying within the boundaries of what is acceptable to God. It’s seen as a lifestyle that limits rather than expands opportunities. To those on the outside (and a few on the inside), the life of a Christ-follower is viewed to bland and boring.Nothing could be further from the truth!The life of a Christ-follower is an invitation to follow him into the risky parts of life ... to serve those who are disenfranchised, to battle injustice, to dream up creative ways of communicating truth.The life of a Christ-follower is to be marked by a sense of adventure. Where will God take me today? Who will I have the opportunity to influence for eternity? What does God have in store for the next chapter of my life? What dream is God forming in my heart that he has the…

Last Thursday, I was working out of the Starbucks on Navajo and Fletcher Parkway. This Starbucks -- like many Starbucks -- doesn't have enough electrical outlets for people to plug into. I find this to be highly annoying, especially since Starbucks is trying to court the laptop crowd. It is either a design flaw in their store roll-out plan or a deliberate attempt to limit the time people will spend in the store.At any rate, I digress. Just had to get that off my chest.I was sitting at a table, plugged into the closest electrical outlet -- which left one open. Two guys sit down at opposite ends of the table and begin to unpack. One guy hands me his power cord and asks if I'll plug him in. So, I take his cord and start to plug it in. At this point, the other fellow speaks up and says…