Goodbye Sam

WOW! As soon as it started, it is now over. The summer has come and gone in a flash. It has been a tremendously successful and fruitful summer. Thanks to all of you for making this summer great for our children. This is also the week that we say goodbye to our intern, Sam Boshell. […]

WOW! As soon as it started, it is now over. The summer has come and gone in a flash. It has been a tremendously successful and fruitful summer. Thanks to all of you for making this summer great for our children.
This is also the week that we say goodbye to our intern, Sam Boshell. Sam has been a huge part of why our summer has been so awesome. Sam and I talked before the summer began, and I told him that second year interns get treated different. I told him to expect a ton more responsibility and more decision making opportunities. He would have the reins for 11 weeks. Sam took the challenge head on and flourished every day. This time next year Sam will be a graduate of Harding Universtiy with a degree in Children’s Ministry. I can’t wait to see what great things God has in store for this fine young man. Thank you Sam for using your talents to glorify God through the RCOC Children’s Ministry!!

A Note From Sam
I would like to thank Riverchase for the opportunity that you have given me over the past two summers. These have been some of the best and most memorable summers that I have had and I am so thankful for all of the fun times and the relationships that I have made. You have helped prepare me in so many ways for a career in ministry after my final year at school. I appreciate all of you more than you know for all of the encouragement and love shown to me. Thank you!

Faith On a Shelf

I have this hat that my dad brought back to me from a business trip to Atlanta when I was 9 or 10 years old. You can see that I’ve worn it a lot. In fact, I wore it to just about everywhere I went during the summer when I was a kid. Church camps, grandparents’ house,...

“Jesus Loves Me”

After being led in this song by two of our young men Sunday night, I was reminded of a quotation from Karl Barth. On April 23, 1962, Karl Barth (the renown 20th Century Swiss-German, neo-orthodox theologian) spoke at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University...

That’s Not a Candle

Several years ago, there was story shared about a woman from Connecticut whose power had gone out during a storm. She left her house to go to a local hardware store to purchase some flashlights, but the store was closed. She returned home and found what she thought...

The Post-Christian Problem

I attended the New Day Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee at the end of last week with a small group from Riverchase. It was a good conference and I left encouraged about the opportunities we have to fulfill the call of Christ to make disciples. On Friday evening,...

Josiah’s Reform

In the thirty-one years of his rule, King Josiah proved to be a faithful man of God and a great king of Judah. He served God from the beginning as a young king and grew into a greater understanding of God’s will and a determination to follow that will. He made a...

You Are What You Eat

You Are What You Eat You’ve heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” Simply defined, it means that you should eat healthy if you want to be healthy. This phrase can trace its roots back to the early 1800’s. It came from the 1826 work The Physiology of Taste, in which...

It Is Well

Above the piano in our house is a large wood sign with the phrase, “it is well with my soul” on it. Kimberly and I purchased it during a season of our life together where we were not completely sure what the future had in store for our little family. Since then, the...

Do Over

  I messed up on recording my recent radio programs. The sound quality was so bad Mark could not run them on the air. So, I deleted them and recorded them again.   I sure wish I could do that in real life with all the other mistakes I make. Just delete them...

Don’t Believe Your Preacher

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. (2 John 1:9 ESV) Here is the test. The “teaching of Christ” is, of course, the very word of God. So, if your...

Balloons Belong in Church

I would like to share with you an excerpt from a poem written by Ann Weems. The beginning of it describes a four-year-old child that brought with her a balloon to church one Sunday. When her Sunday school teacher saw the balloon, she mockingly said to the girl, “We...