A queen bee is special. No queen, no colony. She’s royalty. But apparently, in terms of DNA, every bee in the colony is identical. They all start out the same: jobless, genderless, larvae. And when the time comes for a new queen a larva is chosen (again, no different than the ones around it). This [...]
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Limos don’t age well. I drove by an older one a few weeks back. It looked terrible. And not for reasons you might think: It had been maintained well. It was clean and free of dents. It was driven by a professional-looking, kind-faced chap. It wasn’t even that old, actually (it was probably newer than [...]
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We’re always kicking ideas around at the Maryville Vineyard. At the moment, we’re working on how to create more and better digital giving options. We have online giving available via PayPal. People are using it more and more, which is cool. Some folks give from their paychecks with an automatic withdrawal that comes to us [...]
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We do a lot of brainstorming where I work. Occasionally an idea will be shot down because it won’t be applicable or helpful to the bulk of people. Something like this will be said, “That will only appeal to the fringe.” Good point. We’ve got limited resources and we want to impact as many people as [...]
Continue Reading →Some rules are dumb. Legalistic types in ancient Israel made it a rule that you couldn’t spit in the dirt on the Sabbath. The idea was that spitting in the dirt was similar to mixing mortar…which is work. And, of course, you can’t work on the Sabbath. Therefore: Spit on the dirt: you sin! Spit [...]
Kyle Mules is an incredible kid. He’s also incredibly sick right now. He’s fighting a ruthless virus called Guillain-Barre, along with severe pneumonia and other complications. He’s in ICU at Children’s Hospital. Kyle’s mom, Kelly, recently posted on facebook: Last night the warm peace of Jesus came over me and held me tight…I KNOW HE is [...]
Time was in short supply. For me, there never seemed to be enough time to do my work and serve my family the way the Bible teaches (the way that I want to). Week after week one or both of those things got shorted. And week after week, the guilt and the stress grew. But [...]
Aaron McCarter is the Lead Pastor of Maryville Vineyard Church in East TN.