Several years ago, Warren Wiersbe and I were talking about what the American church would do in a crisis if, in fact, the church couldn’t gather. He asked me questions that have haunted me. “If you couldn’t meet on Sunday, what would you do? If there was no ability to assemble together, what is your strategy for keeping your people together? How would you communicate with them if all electronics were impacted?” Every church needs a crisis strategy. Every church needs a “what now” team of thinkers and prayer warriors who prepare for the unexpected as best they can.

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I’ve just finished preaching at the Mississippi Evangelism Conference. It has been my privilege to preach at this event on several occasions, and I always approach it seriously and ask God to show me the message I need to bring. This year I preached on the connection between prayer and evangelism. It is my fear that, in our desire to increase baptisms and see more people saved, we’ve eliminated, ignored, or trivialized prayer as a component for effective evangelism.

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In this pilgrimage called life, we often face tests. Usually, we think of tests as something we took in school. They were something we crammed for the night before and then prayed hard to pass. We take driver’s tests, blood tests, and the doctors often tell us they need to run some tests. In God’s economy, our tests can be divided into three categories.

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After spending time in the South and the West and having preached in churches in both locales, there are clear differences between the two parts of the country. Particularly regarding the “Bible Belt,” there are things that these churches in the South don’t want to admit or change.

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Recently I was honored to attend the memorial service for my dear friend Warren Wiersbe. It was important to Terri and me that we pay honor to this man who meant so much to us. He and Betty became our friends nearly 25 years ago, and he will be deeply missed.

Through the years, it was instilled in me to honor people. It has always been important to me to remember. We live in a world that easily forgets. With the advancement of technology, it’s easy to just check the box and move on to the next thing. That does a disservice to us and to those we love.

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