By: Dr. Paul Raybon Last time I wrote about how seeing your church facilities as a gift to be shared can change how you do ministry and how you relate with your community. Churches can also use that gift to generate alternate streams of income. As churches we are rightfully wary of becoming profit-oriented and …
By: Dr. Paul Raybon My church, Hominy Baptist in Candler, North Carolina, is over 200 years old. We are a small-medium sized congregation, which in the post COVID world means about 150 folks participating in worship and/or ministry on a regular basis, and about half that number in worship on any given Sunday. Many churches …
by Dr. Paul Raybon I went looking at the handwritten minutes of Hominy Baptist Church to see if there was more about the fire of 1923 than what was recorded in the official histories. (Yes, histories, when you’re 210 years old, every generation gets a swipe at telling your story). The simple entry above captured …
by Dr. Paul Raybon You may remember doing a values clarification exercise in school with this prompt. “Your house is on fire, what 10 things will you try to save?” Then a follow up, “Time is running out! You have to leave five, what will you keep?” Individual lists are then shared in a small …
By Rev. Dr. Paul Raybon One of my very favorite people, a long-time lay leader, is a retired teacher who, when she gets really mad, will exclaim “Anglo-Saxon ad infinitum.” Because as we all know, all the best curse words are Anglo-Saxon. Put another way, how many people yell “excrement” when they hit their thumb …
By Dr. Paul Raybon I have to start by confessing that I am a lover of words. I still have my crumbling 45-year-old paperback Roget’s Thesaurus, although truth be told I am more likely to consult thesaurus.com in a pinch these days. And to be precise, I am not a lover of all words, I …
by Dr. S. Paul Raybon In my recent E-ncourager article When People Choose Poorly, under the heading “Refuse to be Complicit,” I laid out a number of things we need to learn. Learn not to be an enabler. Learn not to engage in pointless arguments. Learn not to be tolerant of intolerable behavior and language. …
By Dr. Paul Raybon Sooner or later we all grieve the loss of someone because of what we regard as their poor choices. If you live enough years and love enough people, you will endure this pain many times, and it never gets easier. There is a level of anger, resentment, and sometimes guilt, peculiar …
This week I found the file for the first workshop I led on communication, complete with acetate overhead sheets, from 25 years ago! It is interesting to note changes. There was no mention of internet, email, texting, Facebook, Twitter, or any form of social media. There was no discussion of cultural bias, gender identity, or …
By Dr. Paul Raybon One of my favorite boyhood jokes goes like this: The Lone Ranger and Tonto were surrounded by an Indian war party; they sent their horses Silver and Scout away to safety, and now were down to their last bullets. The Lone Ranger turns to Tonto and says “I don’t think we’re …
