tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35982898573713130602011-04-21T22:51:14.711-04:00Glenn McDonald's blogZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.comBlogger221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-46982365737141572702009-01-01T17:18:00.000-05:002009-01-07T17:19:18.427-05:00

In the climactic scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harrison Ford’s adventuring archeologist enters the secluded chamber that has long been home to the Holy Grail – the cup from which Jesus purportedly drank at the Last Supper. He has already faced and passed a trio of life-threatening tests. Suddenly his rival rushes into the room behind him. Who will get to the Grail first?One barrier

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-78224947927948509882008-12-18T17:15:00.000-05:002009-01-07T17:16:40.529-05:00

One hundred years ago, in 1908, the world was a very different place. It’s rather hard to grasp, in fact, how much the United States and the world have changed over the course of a single century.One hundred years ago, the average life expectancy in America was 47. Only 14% of American homes had a bathtub, and just 10% had a telephone.In 1908 Henry Ford began production of his Model T. William C.

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-45878105156471858982008-12-04T19:43:00.001-05:002008-12-07T22:10:41.636-05:00

In his book The True Believer, Eric Hoffer makes this significant statement: “A movement can exist without a God but never without a devil. There has to be an enemy to be destroyed.”Identifying a dangerous enemy that is Out There is without question the most effective short-term mobilizing principle for groups, including entire nations. Religious movements have long known that money, passion, and

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-87498341288619172622008-11-20T19:42:00.000-05:002008-12-04T19:43:49.748-05:00

When my son Tyler was 19 years old, he and I had the joy of experiencing a summer trip together to Europe. Early on we had an entire day – a Sunday, it turned out – to explore London on our own. We left our hotel about noon and took a thirty-minute trip on the London Underground subway system in the general direction of the British Museum.Halfway to our stop it was obvious that Tyler, out of the

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-57252844594502222642008-11-06T19:40:00.000-05:002008-12-04T19:42:01.079-05:00

Last month I took off on a journey that I had dreamed about for the better part of one year, ever since I received an invitation to speak at a church in the eastern Pennsylvania town of Chambersburg.Chambersburg just happens to be up the road from a small village that for three days in 1863 became the epicenter of American history: Gettysburg. More than a decade ago I had explored what Abraham

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-6816974194350536442008-10-23T19:37:00.000-04:002008-12-04T19:40:22.771-05:00

Last month my wife and I were awakened at 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday by the sound of our oldest dog, Cory, who is a 13-year-old Sheltie, collapsing on the floor in our bedroom. After we tended him for a while and realized that his condition was grave, Mary Sue scooped him up and drove him to an all-night vet clinic. There he was X-rayed. Blood was drawn. The doctors offered to perform exploratory

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-39896111211253154462008-09-25T15:51:00.000-04:002008-09-25T15:52:39.763-04:00

Scott Shelton is one gracious guy. Scott is a fellow staff member at my congregation – specifically, the Director of Family Life Ministries at Zionsville Presbyterian Church. He also happens to be roughly my height and my build, although my body is increasingly becoming what that small boy used to call Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup in the TV ads: thickerer.About five years ago I noticed that a

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-31630449014840677652008-09-12T15:50:00.001-04:002008-09-25T15:53:28.463-04:00

Like most Americans, I have spent few waking hours thinking about Eastern Europe. In the back of my mind I have always been aware that there is a loose collection of nations that have had the geographical misfortunate of occupying the ground between Russia and the more advanced European states, and that Soviet Communism pillaged all of them in one way or another.My working acquaintance with life

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-13603703147368977852008-08-28T15:49:00.002-04:002008-09-25T15:54:01.141-04:00

A few summers ago my three sons and I undertook the ultimate road trip: a 9,300-mile venture from Zionsville to Alaska and back. Every stage of our trip went according to plan until we reached the Yukon Territory on our way home. There were wildfires in the area – more than one thousand of them, we later learned.We pulled into the town of Watson Lake and noticed that a barricade had been

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-24510896796881547222008-08-14T15:47:00.002-04:002008-09-25T15:54:15.373-04:00

Americans love fantasy. We daydream about spectacular vacations. We wonder what we would do if we were holding the winning Lotto ticket. We transport our children to Disney World, where Cinderella’s castle dominates the landscape. Millions of us pretend to be NFL owners and draft our own fantasy football teams. Entire industries have been created to do little more than indulge our occasional

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-27881410117634081582008-07-30T15:52:00.001-04:002008-08-01T15:56:22.301-04:00

There are a dazzling number of ways to divide humanity into two groups.There are men and women; morning people and night people; Coke drinkers and Pepsi drinkers; introverts and extroverts; IU fans and Purdue fans; risk-takers and play-it-safers; and those who unroll the toilet paper from the bottom vs. those who unroll it from the top (as God always intended).This year we can add a brand new way

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-90358797796711196142008-07-19T15:50:00.001-04:002008-08-01T15:52:05.006-04:00

What’s the biggest change our culture has experienced over the past 40 years?You can make a case for the explosion of technology, the decline of civility, the collapse of communism, the ascent of terrorism, the rise and fall of Britney Spears, or the spread of a pervasive “me-first” attitude in a majority of society’s members.From my perspective as a church leader, I think the most compelling

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-55436875376278535002008-07-03T15:48:00.000-04:002008-08-01T15:50:04.627-04:00

Several years back I read excerpts of an interview with Sheila Larson, a young nurse. “I believe in God,” she said. “I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheliaism. Just my own little voice.”Sheila Larson speaks for multitudes of Americans. Unlike other Western nations, which in recent decades have seemed to abandon

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-56630462514100488012008-06-19T15:43:00.000-04:002008-08-01T15:48:20.737-04:00

What’s the most crucial of all relational issues? That’s easy. It’s forgiveness.A woman once approached the late author Lewis Smedes, a man who came as close as anyone to being a contemporary expert on the challenge of forgiving, shortly after he spoke at a seminar. She said, “I appreciate what you have to say about forgiveness. But I think my forgiver is broken.” Smedes wisely answered, “I think

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-75696733363993534522008-06-05T16:55:00.000-04:002008-06-06T16:57:29.865-04:00

Osama bin Laden is the world’s most wanted man. He may in fact be the most wanted fugitive in world history. He is the prime suspect in the September 11, 2001, terror attacks (which he has called “blessed”), and there is currently a $50 million bounty on his head. What Western authorities know about bin Laden is that he is tall and lanky; at six-foot-four-inches, he may suffer from a genetic

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-23260848100633722212008-05-22T11:00:00.000-04:002008-05-30T11:10:26.864-04:00

One night last winter, at a dinner party at a friend’s home, one of the guests came up with this interesting conversation starter: What would you say is on your personal bucket list? He was referring to the recent movie, The Bucket List, in which Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, two men who are simultaneously diagnosed with terminal cancer, jet off to do all the things they’ve always wanted to

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-50263565138623796172008-05-19T10:56:00.000-04:002008-05-30T11:07:54.654-04:00

I recently returned, along with 30 other ZPCers, from a 16-day study trip to the Holy Lands. It was a significant adventure and learning experience and I’m sure our stories will be spilling out for weeks to come. Our stops included biblical sites in Egypt and Jordan, but most of our days were spent in the nation of Israel. Modern day Israel is an astonishing place. It is a little more than

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-72813234293031961802008-04-24T11:00:00.000-04:002008-05-30T11:52:26.805-04:00

I’ve always wanted to be considered what you might call a normal person. You know, someone you can talk to at the grocery store; a guy who could sit next to you at a Colts game and scream at the appropriate moments; a music fan who can name the drummer in his favorite band, and who enjoys a great movie from time to time. In other words, I’d love to be someone who isn’t dramatically different, or

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-22228250266396514322008-04-19T11:00:00.000-04:002008-06-02T15:15:35.819-04:00

It’s an old illustration. But it’s also spot-on. Once upon a time, the animals decided they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of the new world. So they organized a school. They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects. The duck was excellent in swimming; in

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-1113665971613661392008-04-09T11:00:00.000-04:002008-06-02T15:14:37.721-04:00

Once while staying in Orlando, Florida, my wife and I got what a couple of Hoosiers would call the chance of a lifetime. The local news affiliates announced that the launch of the next space shuttle was a "go" for 3:18 P.M. on what was predicted to be a beautiful afternoon. In fact, the reporter threw in that this was only the second time in the history of the shuttle program that the "launch

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-64520507158269428102008-03-28T11:00:00.000-04:002008-06-02T15:17:37.089-04:00

Richard Dawkins, Oxford Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, isn’t merely irritated that widespread belief in God continues to persist in the twenty-first century. He genuinely has it in for this Deity whom he is sure does not exist. In The God Delusion, Dawkins launches a broadside at the God portrayed in the Old Testament: Arguably the most unpleasant character in all

ZPC's Sessionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630297763349708596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3598289857371313060.post-14652136879859638742008-03-14T23:20:00.000-04:002008-06-02T15:11:03.152-04:00

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 For thirty years I almost single-handedly kept Mountain Dew in business. At the beginning of this year, however, I took a long look in the mirror and faced the truth: I am a caffeine addict. Or at least I was. In January I went “cold turkey” and decided to give up my dependence on the world’s most celebrated stimulant. It wasn’t easy. After a stretch of days with some

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