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This past weekend my wife and I had the opportunity to visit with the good folks of the Bainbridge (OH) Church of Christ, a former ministry of mine. Bainbridge provides some bittersweet memories for me. It was my first legitimate full-time ministry. The reason I say legitimate is because the White Oak Christian Church in Bath County, Kentucky, was supposed to be a full-time ministry but it was based on the men of the church hiring me out during the week to make up what was a definite short fall in pay. But back to Bainbridge.

As a minister I am supposed to be friendly, understanding,…  ( Click for more )

I've "been around." That is a polite way of saying that I have not settled in a church for the long term and had that landmark ministry of more than twenty years. As a result, my children have vowed that they were going to try to settle in one place and stay there for the rest of their lives. The thing is, they'd like us to stay where we are for the rest of our lives, too. We would like that and are working toward it. But there are a lot of memories from the different ministries I have served.

Becky and I will be at one of those places this weekend. We leave after…  ( Click for more )

With the North American Christian Convention being in our "backyard" over at the prestigious Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, we had contacts with a few people who were interested in bunking out with us for the convention to save hotel/motel costs. The ones that contacted us first were Brian and Misty Gorman. Brian is the former Senior Minister of the Robinson Christian Church near Cynthiana, Kentucky. He is currently the Senior Associate Minister of the First Christian Church, Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Brian and my oldest son, John, are good friends. John introduced…  ( Click for more )

The North American Christian Convention is an annual convention for the Independent Christian Churches, or, as we are known to the government, the undenominational fellowship of the churches of Christ and Christian Churches instrumental. Usually there is one convention held in one city somewhere in the forty-eight contiguous states. However, this year was different. Three conventions were being held at three separate locations. The Corona, California and Lexington, Kentucky conventions have already been held. The Jacksonville, Florida convention is yet to come.

While one of…  ( Click for more )

Animals have played a rather bizarre part in many chapters of both history and fiction. Rodents have been a fixation for some famous people. President Andrew Johnson kept pet mice while he was in the White House. There was no word on whether or not they performed any information gathering functions. Rats were important to the famed Indian Yogi K. N. Udupa. He actually figured out a way to train rats to perform many of the different postures of yoga.

European settlers had long viewed Africa as a place for expansion. However there was a problem with which the Europeans were…  ( Click for more )

What is it that attaches worth to an object? In "Raiders of the Lost Ark," the first of the Indiana Jones movies, Jones is talking with his adversary, Dr. Rene Belloq, who wistfully comments that his watch is worthless unless he buries it in the dirt for a hundred years and then it is valuable. Then it becomes an artifact of the age in which it existed. It lends itself to explaining the people of that age through their inventions. Worth is not necessarily objective, but curiously subjective.

My collection of Ohio State University memorabilia has a dollar value based on the…  ( Click for more )

Many famous people have overcome some sort of physical difficulty to excel at what they do. Even some who were infamous became so through overcoming some handicap. Tamerlane, the Tartar who conquered all the land from India to Russia in the fourteenth century, was partially paralyzed. His name actually meant, "Timur the Lame." His feat is all the more remarkable when it is noted that superstition was rampant in the fourteenth century to the point where paralysis was viewed as a curse and those so afflicted were normally put to death.

In more modern times such celebrities as…  ( Click for more )

Many of Major League Baseball's teams have moved a time or two. The Los Angeles Dodgers started out in Brooklyn. The San Francisco Giants began in New York. The Minnesota Twins started out in our nation's Capitol as the Washington Senators. The Oakland Athletics began in Philadelphia. Then there are the twice removed. The teams that just kept moving from city to city until they found a climate more conducive to baseball and less conducive to comparisons with other teams in the area.

Among those teams are the Atlanta Braves. The Braves moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee,…  ( Click for more )

During the two weeks leading up to the contesting of the our national golf championship, the U. S. Open, all the talk was about how the cream rises to the top at the Open like no other golf championship. The top ten golfers in the world will be the ones who will shine. Surely the champion will come from this elite group of golfers. Maybe one of the "Big Four" will win. Maybe Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson or Ernie Els will claim victory at the end of play on Sunday. After all, it is the Open.

At the beginning of play on Thursday, Phil Mickelson was heard to remark…  ( Click for more )

Had a good laugh the other day. I saw a flyer for a golf tournament. The people who run the tournament evidently thought that they needed something to really grab people's attention. Right there it was in beautiful red ink on the flyer; the attention grabber. One single word that should grab attention. After all, it grabbed mine and I'm currently wrestling with it to get my attention back. The word is, "INVITATIONAL."

In professional golf, an "invitational" tournament is one in which you contact those whom you wish to compete and offer them the invitational to do…  ( Click for more )

Wealth has its advantages. Just ask the players of the Professional Golfers Association. The guys whose names are synonymous with the PGA have a distinct advantage over those who are less well known but just as traveled. Money can play an important part in the ability for a tour pro to concentrate on his game and devote himself to playing the best he possibly can. How can money help a golfer concentrate? Let me explain.

The players who are wealthy outside the PGA tour are those who have parlayed their golf abilities into fame in commercial endeavors. Before Tiger Woods ever…  ( Click for more )

Came across some really outlandish facts the other day concerning the laws that exist in some corners of the United States. These are actual laws. I wonder how closely the local police watch for these things or whether or not those who see these terrible crimes perpetrated turn people in as vicious criminals. There are several things concerning these laws that I will point out, but, for now, here they are courtesy of the "Bathroonm Reader."

In Tennessee it is illegal to drive a car while you're asleep. What I wonder is, does that mean it is illegal to fall asleep while…  ( Click for more )

Not long ago some of the neighborhood kids stopped by for a visit. The two boys are ones with which I talk quite a bit when I have the opportunity. One boy especially, Nicholas, is my personal project. I hope to get him and his family coming to our church and sharing in our growth. Nicholas is such an inquisitive kid. Everything is interesting to him. He was curious to see our house since his is just two doors down and looks a little like ours.

The downstairs area looked very familiar as did the upstairs area. However, when I showed him the middle bedroom something caught…  ( Click for more )

I first started making golf clubs back in 1976. I remember the day when making a wood involved more steps than just "epoxy the metalwood to the shaft." I used to buy the blanks. Blanks were rough wood turnings of either persimmon or laminated hardrock Canadian maple. They were not smoothed down and ready to be finished and were not bored for the shaft to fit. They also needed the areas for the face insert and soleplate to be routed out. The first job was to trim and bore the hosel (neck) for the shaft. The shafts at that time were predominately tapered steel shafts so the hole…  ( Click for more )

A week ago, a very dear man passed away in Bellville, Ohio. Lewis K. (Jack) Snavely was a fascinating man. He was one of the more brilliant people I have ever met in my life. But even I didn't know everything about Jack. His family filled in the cracks for me when I met with them This past Tuesday evening to prepare for the funeral the next day. What I was told was mind-blowing for a man who lived in a little place like Bellville.

Jack Snavely was a very clever and industrious man. When his children wanted something to play on in the backyard he built them a motorized…  ( Click for more )

First tee jitters. You've just stepped to the first tee. You're stiff. Your last round of golf was not a good one with the driver. You were hitting your tee shots like a radical Republican; everything was far right. But the course was one that allowed you to stray right and not be punished. Now you're on another course. Twenty yards right of the fairway you see them. They stand there silently, challenging you with their presence, warning you that beyond them is the death of your score. They are the white out-of-bounds stakes.

Deeply ingrained in your thoughts…  ( Click for more )

In which room of your house do you spend the most time? Now, in which room of your house do you spend the most time actively doing something? The room in which most people spend the most time is the bedroom. However, time spent there is just that; it is time not activity. Bedrooms are for sleeping. Unless you're a restless sleeper chances are you do very little other than dress in your bedroom. However, here is where the differences lie. The room you're most active in is dependent upon your gender and role in your family.

If you are the wife, you probably spend…  ( Click for more )

For a guy raised in a small town in south central Ohio, whose earliest recollections of sports were football with the Ohio State Buckeyes and Cleveland Browns, I had two sports shrines. One was, and still is, the Horseshoe; Ohio Stadium at Columbus on the campus of the Ohio State University. The other is no longer standing. Cleveland Municipal Stadium in Cleveland has been torn down to make way for a new shrine; the current Browns Stadium.

I was in the 'Shoe as a high school student. I was at Ohio State with a group from some academic function one spring during my Junior…  ( Click for more )

Now that the Star Wars saga is complete, what have we learned? Star Wars was a compilation of stories of lives that are interwoven like threads into a marvelous fabric of a tale. There's the story of the aging Jedi Master, Yoda, whose ability as a Jedi knight in the power of The Force was legendary. There is his protégé, Ben Kenobi, whose desire is to be like his master and train the Jedi in the mastery of The Force. In the backdrop is the struggle of a people for freedom; the Rebel Alliance against The Empire.

But we all thought Star Wars was about Luke Skywalker.…  ( Click for more )

Every now and then the odd but true catches my eye. You know, the kind of story that makes you go, "Hmmmm." The poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley was one who could not swim. In fact, most believed him to be afraid of the water. Yet, he mustered his courage one day and, acting on a whim that he would like to swim, he dove into a deep pool of water in which his friends were enjoying themselves. He nearly drowned before one of those friends pulled him to safety.

Reflecting on the event he wrote, "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say truth lies there. In another minute…  ( Click for more )

In a couple of months my home church will be celebrating her fiftieth anniversary. I am privileged to have been asked to be a part of that celebration. With that coming celebration my mind has been in a reflective mode. I was very young when I first got a taste of the fellowship of the new Church of Christ in Jeffersonville, Ohio. I was all of five years old when I stood with the others who sang while I held my mom's leg and cried. At five, church can be frightening.

I grew up in that church. Through the years there was one building that came to mean so very much to…  ( Click for more )

Every now and then something happens which heightens my appreciation for those who have certain skills. When I think of the many woodworking projects I have done over the years I am reminded by each one of the expertise of those professionals whose abilities allow them to turn woodworking projects into masterpieces. This past weekend I received a fresh dose of appreciation for another group of professionals; the men of the Professional Golfers Association.

Last Friday morning at 11:00 my son John and our friends in the ministry, Brian Gorman and Tim Gould, and I teed off on the…  ( Click for more )

Does size matter? I hadn't really thought much about that until yesterday morning. I had left at my usual time to head up to the Lock N Key, a coffee shop in downtown Georgetown. As I came out to the light at the end of Champion Way I got into the right turn lane. I was behind a couple of trucks; an SUV and a pickup that was in front. The pickup truck did not have a turn signal on and was just sitting at the light even though no traffic was approaching. I wondered if he had planned to go straight and had gotten in the wrong lane.

When the light turned green the pickup…  ( Click for more )

Ten years ago I was forty-four. My hair was dark. What am I saying? I actually had hair. I was still fairly active, playing softball for the church softball team and even doing some periodic jogging. At times I would walk a golf course and carry my bag. At that time, I remember thinking that being forty-four was getting up there. Now I am ten years closer to "up there" and, my, how things have changed! My dark hair is now gray, what's left of it. The arthritis in my knees has progressed enough that walking a golf course while carrying my bag is definitely out of the question.

Age…  ( Click for more )