Posts with the tag “pastor-wil-staley”

By now I'm sure we've all heard the New Year's resolution stats right? Most people don't keep up with their resolutions past February. I personally have been hit-and-miss with mine. One of the strateg...  Read More

Have you ever felt abandoned? I remember that's how I felt after high school. My high school years were some of the best times of my life. I had a lot of really close friends, or so I thought. I enjoy...  Read More

Are you the type of person who must finish what you start? I'm not. In fact, I'm really bad at finishing certain things. I've been known to start books and never finish them. Start projects and never ...  Read More

Every generation has its version of slang. In the 1920s for example, "The bees knees" was an extraordinary person or thing, "Putting on the Ritz" meant to do something with style, and "iron ones shoel...  Read More

How do you respond when under attack? Everyone who knows me knows I'm a big movie guy. One of my favorites is the classic Karate Kid. One of the most iconic scenes in the movie is when Mr. Miyagi show...  Read More

Have you ever played Two Truths and a Lie? It's a fun get-to-know-you, icebreaker game that I often play in situations when I'm around new people. Let's try it. Here are my three: a) I have been in a ...  Read More

I'm not sure about you but I have a love, kinda love relationship with my family. Some of my family memebers are loud and bolsterous. Some of them are stubborn and REALLY challenging. Some of them are...  Read More

You may be familiar with the author Stephen Covey and his book, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People." In the book, one of Covey's encouraged habits is, to begin with the end in mind. The idea is that...  Read More

How do you feel about opposition? I'm not sure if you heard this story before but in elementary school one of my favorite days of the year was field day. It was a day in which we would compete in a va...  Read More

Have you ever had the opportunity to go on a mission trip? Maybe you've worked on houses (building, painting, or landscaping). Maybe you've been involved in Vacation Bible School in a small town, inne...  Read More

Have you ever felt powerless? Some people feel this way if they owe an insurmountable debt or experience a difficult addiction they can't seem to get free from. This type of feeling can leave individu...  Read More

I love coaching. I started coaching back in 2010. It started as a selfish way to get more volunteer hours on my resume for a promotion board I was going on while I was in the Marine Corps...and yes I ...  Read More

"Captain America: The First Avenger" is a classic for me. I mean who wouldn't love an underdog story of a scrawny kid who gets superpowers and fights for our country? There's a scene early on in the m...  Read More

Does the name Duce McKenzie mean anything to you because it shouldn't. You see that was a nickname given to me by one of my good friends in high school. The name is actually a combination of two names...  Read More

Have you ever seen some of those crazed fans in the crowd at a sporting event? Some of them are in costumes, some have their faces painted, and some even appear to be from another planet. No matter wh...  Read More

Who is your favorite "unlikely" hero? Me being a youth guy, a few that come to mind are Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Peter Parker, and Emmet from the Lego Movie. Of course, there are several biblical ...  Read More

I don't know if you ever changed your major in college but I have had quite a bit of experience in that area. For me, it was after I'd been medically separated from the Marine Corps (which I found my ...  Read More

Each day this week we are releasing a video devotional from one of our pastors related to the Passion Week designed to help you meditate on the events of Jesus' final week.We invite you to go through ...  Read More

Have you ever purchased something online and when it arrived it was not quite what you thought it would be? I remember for Alexis and I's five-year wedding anniversary I wanted to do something special...  Read More

If you've never seen the movie "Finding Dory", I imagine you don't have young children, but the movie is the sequel to Disney's hit film "Finding Nemo". In the original movie, Marlon is a widowed fath...  Read More

A recent set of statistics from a survey said that 7% of participants stuck to all their resolutions in 2019, while 19% kept some but not all resolutions, 8% of participants fail to keep any resolutio...  Read More

Did you know, according to a 2015 Pew Research Forum study, atheists only account for 3.1% of the U.S. population. So, the other 96.9% may not believe in the God of the Bible, but they still affirm be...  Read More

If you were going to put together a winning team playing, what kinds of people would you select? Perhaps you’d look for the biggest, strongest, fastest people giving you a physical advantage. Maybe yo...  Read More

1954 William Golding wrote a book about some well-educated English schoolboys who crashed into the paradise of a deserted island with no adult survivors. Many of you know this literary timeless classi...  Read More

One of the most entertaining parts of sports is the dramatic stories. Wimbledon 2001 was one of the most dramatic scenes in tennis history for a man named Goran Ivanisevic. The former 1992 Australian ...  Read More

The start of a new school year brings back personal memories of my own starts to a new semester. I remember being excited when I finally received my class schedule for a new school year. If you were a...  Read More

For a youth guy, this time of year is always associated with back to school. August-September time frame has all the implications of a new school year, which means new classes, new friends, new teache...  Read More

If you had to guess what the slang phrase "brown study" means, what would you say? Let me pause and tell you that you can't cheat and ask someone from Gen Z. Well you can, but they'd likely have no id...  Read More

As a kid, out of all things, I really enjoyed coloring. It was something that I often did with my cousins. We'd spend hours coloring and you could find coloring books and crayons pretty much all over ...  Read More

Where do you get your inspiration from? Do me a favor; I want you to take a deep 15-second diaphragm breath. You're going to inhale for six seconds, hold for two seconds, and exhale for seven seconds....  Read More

What's the best meal you've ever had and what made it so great? I think about the first time I had king crab legs and ate until I felt like I was going to explode. I am a huge seafood guy in general, ...  Read More

Do you have any embarrassing nicknames? The reason I specify "embarrassing" is because sometimes the more embarrassing the nickname is, the greater the story behind it. Between sports as a kid and the...  Read More

Do you have any physical scars? I mean like, significant scars that have somewhat become a part of who you are?  As a child, I was very injury-prone. I got hurt often and have many memories of trips t...  Read More

In life, we can all tend to not listen to warnings that are given to us by others. Especially when we want to do things our own way, because let’s be honest, we prefer to do things our way. There’s ju...  Read More

In 1981, a millionaire named Eugene Michael Lang visited a sixth-grade class in East Harlem. Mr. Lang had been asked to speak to a class of 59 sixth-graders. What could he say to inspire these student...  Read More

I've never taken a ceramics class but I've heard they can be really fun. Many people have said that taking the "nothing" clay and molding into "something" is an enjoyable and relaxing experience. Funn...  Read More

Do you remember BASIC cable? Most of my students have no idea what that is but it's the TV programming package that you paid for to get a limited number of local channels. As a kid growing up, I didn'...  Read More

Jesus said some things that were pretty hard to comprehend. For example, at one point He said if you have faith you can tell a mountain to go jump in the ocean and it will do it. (Mark 11:23). I imagi...  Read More

There have been few things in my life that I have been devoted to. One of those things without question is the United States Marine Corps. During boot camp, every waking moment was spent dreaming of g...  Read More

I consider myself a pretty loving person. But honestly what Christian wouldn’t? If you don’t consider yourself a loving person you may need to go check the greatest commandment Jesus gave in Matthew 2...  Read More