Mike Leake

A team of archaeologists recently unearthed a new scroll containing 2 Samuel 12. It is now being dubbed the King David Version, as it presents the king as not incurring all the guilt for his murderous affair with Bathsheba. Randy Hogan, chairman of the Super Convenient Archaeology Team (SCAT), remarked that this finding came at a “tremendously helpful and opportune time for our nation.” They were shocked to find, hidden in an ancient refrigerator, an unscathed manuscript of the prophet Nathan’s confrontation of King David. After the discovery a crack team of Hebrew professors quickly worked … [Read more...] about King David Bible Uncovered

“Can you tell us a little about your call to the ministry…” I’ve gotten that question, I believe, in every church interview I’ve had. And every time I talked about how the Lord called me to himself and then a bit of jumbled mess about not being sure in college but really having a compulsion to preach. I share a story about when I was really laboring with that and a professor said, “If you can do something else you should do it.” Preaching has been like a fire in my bones that I can’t not do…so I figure that’s my internal call. I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with the question and … [Read more...] about The Danger of “Has God Called You Into the Ministry?”

You are on a diet. For the past week you’ve been exercising like a professional athlete and eating nothing but rabbit food. Then you walk by a kid selling strawberry pies. You buy three of them hoping to share with your family. You eat all three. But you justify this by saying, “I’ve done so good on my diet that I deserve to cheat a little”. Sociologists have coined a term for this behavior. It is called moral licensing. And it extends to far more than just eating strawberry pie while on a diet. Studies have found that when we humans do something that we consider a good deed rather than … [Read more...] about Moral Licensing in the SBC?

In 1845, when the American Baptist Home Mission Society, refused the nomination of James Reeve (a slaveholder) the seeds were planted for the birth of a new denomination. By May 1845 white delegates from the deep South gathered (293 in all) together and formed a new mission society—The Southern Baptist Convention. Yes, our beloved denomination was founded because our forefathers wanted to own slaves. Al Mohler is even more pointed when he says: In fact, the SBC was not only founded by slaveholders; it was founded by men who held to an ideology of racial superiority and who bathed that … [Read more...] about Should We Move On From Talking About Our Racist Past?

We are community makers. I see this in my daughter all the time. The other day she had a group of friends, a flashlight, a cape, and their imagination. They’d only been playing for about five minutes and already formed a club—the Ghost Hunters. About ten minutes into this little charade community rules developed. They were having the time of their lives and plotting out their ideas for world domination….and then the whole thing blew up. We are community destroyers. I assume that somebody called someone else a doody head or tried to grab some power that wasn’t theirs and the whole … [Read more...] about A Community Built On Grievance Will Never Last

Is it just to allow an innocent person to pay for the crime of a guilty person? Let’s try that out in story form. A wretched woman stands trial for murdering a husband and wife. The jury finds the woman guilty of all the heinous crimes she is accused of. It is now the day when sentencing will be handed down. The prosecuting attorney was going for the death penalty. The judge agrees that someone deserves to die for these crimes. But everyone in the court is shocked when instead of passing sentence on the guilty murderer the punishment is handed over to an innocent son of the … [Read more...] about Is It Just For the Innocent to Pay for the Sins of the Guilty?

I’m not sure which one of these collections is the most insane. So many questions go through my head as I scan through these 43 weird collections. I mean, what causes a guy to start collecting traffic cones? Where has all of my uncollected belly button lint gone to? Is the toe-nail clippings guy married? Are they really all his toenails? What water fight is the guy with 240 unique super-soakers preparing for? But I think I’ve got a collection which is just as ridiculous. Or at least I used to. Thankfully by the grace of God I’ve started giving some of my collection away—and I’ve mostly … [Read more...] about My Foolish Collection

And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away. (Ezra 3:11c-13 ESV) Tears can be difficult to interpret. The … [Read more...] about Our Celebrations Need the Tears of the Elders

I’ve been doing ministry now for over a decade. That’s enough time to know both how to be a complete moron and how to actually do a few things correctly. If I had a few minutes to sit a new minister down and share a few things I’ve learned, I know that I’d tell him things about loving Jesus, loving people, and being an absolute servant to the Word of God. But there is one piece of advice that I believe is vital which probably wouldn’t make it incredibly high up on our list of things to say. Here it is: You cannot fulfill your God-given job of being cold water to a thirsty soul if you give … [Read more...] about One Non-Typical Piece of Advice I’d Give to Someone Entering Ministry

It was an innocent question. Here it was January and my yard was filled with what appeared to be every leaf in a twelve-mile radius. Something had to be done and so I asked one of my deacons—an elderly gentleman—if he knew any tricks to quickly getting them out of my yard. He’s the type of guy that’s great at figuring that stuff out. He had informed me the night before that he didn’t know too many tricks on that one. So, I was very surprised the next day when my wife informed me that this guy was in our front yard taking care of our leaf problem. I felt kind of bad—a man fifty years my … [Read more...] about When You Smell a Skunk In the Road