RELEVANT • January 5 2022

Nine Signs It's Time to Quit Your Job

You go to the meetings and throw out half-baked ideas on increasing sales. You ramble through conversations with co-workers about new products or new company initiatives. You see your boss, or his boss, or the boss of his boss, and masquerade enthusiasm like an Oscar-winning actor. All the while, you’re dying inside. Faking it is hard and exhausting. If you notice you’re stuck in the role of a pretender, it might be time to make an exit.

Medium • May 30 2021

4 Storytelling Lessons from The Notorious B.I.G.

Let’s consider a different “writer”. Songwriters do a fantastic job of telling their stories, mixing imagery and thought-provoking lines to get their message across. One terrific example of this comes from the world of hip-hop. Let’s consider Notorious B.I.G. and his decades-old smash hit “Juicy”.

Medium • May 3 2021

Loving Your Kids Isn’t Enough

I didn’t fully appreciate my parents’ words until I was in college and met different people whose experiences growing up were vastly different from mine. Surprise! Not every kid grows up in a loving home with two parents who love each other well and encourage their children with regularity.

Medium • March 12 2022

Stop Being Polite to God

Conor O’Malley’s mom is dying. And there’s nothing he can do about it.

Recently I saw a question on an online book forum. “What’s the saddest book?” Several answered A Monster Calls. I immediately picked it up that afternoon from the local library.

Medium • May 16 2021

5 Methods for Punching Writer’s Block in the Throat

You and I will never be John Grisham. But there are some ways that we can overcome the writer’s block that tends to plague many of us who claim to be writers. Here are 5 methods that have worked for me. They might just do the trick for you.

Psalm Society • February 25 2022

5 Ways to Enhance Your Prayer Life

Prayer is a privilege you can readily enjoy each day. Its full spiritual and emotional benefits will keep drawing you back to it. As Christians, we have been urged to “pray without ceasing,” (I Thessalonians 5:17, ESV). This is a loving command to help remind us that God stands ready to unburden our hearts and minds every moment of the day.

Medium • September 29 2021

LulaRich! 9 Lessons You Can Learn From LulaRoe’s Downfall

The recent Amazon documentary LulaRich is a four-episode crash course in Business Culture 101. The MLM company LulaRoe is what some might call a pyramid scheme. But beyond the red flag buzzword, LulaRoe’s near complete collapse is more than a cautionary tale of empty promises and gaudy clothing (hamburger print leggings? seriously?). There are nine lessons businesses both big and small can take from the documentary.

Psalm Society • February 25 2022

4 Tips for Quiet Time

Think for a moment about someone special in your life. It might be a spouse or a best friend. How did that person become someone you cared for and trusted? It would be fair to say that closeness didn't happen by chance. It probably occurred by spending lots of quality time with them. Not just now and then, but regularly.

Psalm Society • February 25 2022

Is God in Your Tool Belt?

For every trial we face, every obstacle, every overwhelming task, we have a tool belt. Our tool belt is full of things we swear by. Things we need to accomplish the weighty job before us. If it's a financial crisis, we have money. And if we don't have that, we have credit cards, or banks to ask for loans from, or pleas to collection agencies to give us more time.

Psalm Society • February 25 2022

The Perfect Remedy for Fear

According to the numbers, the top-grossing horror movie of all time is It, the thriller based on Stephen King's book of the same title. I haven't seen the movie or read the book, but from what I can tell the premise has to do with killer clowns. That sounds like a scary movie for sure. Worldwide the movie brought in over $700 million. That's a lot of cash just to be scared by some actors wearing wigs and red noses.

Medium • September 21 2021

A Simple, Brilliant Business Lesson from David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, told about a time he faced a conundrum with a potential client. Hallmark, the maker of cards that tell your loved ones the words you can never come up with on your own, once approached Ogilvy’s advertising agency about taking them on as a client.

Medium • December 16 2021

The Sacrifice of the St. Paul Thunderbolt

One of the biggest, bravest men in history stood just six feet tall and weighed around 160 pounds. Pasty white, knobby knees, and fists that flew faster than even his nickname insinuated: the St. Paul Thunderbolt.

Medium • December 9 2021

My Favorite Trip to Take is a Power Trip

I’ve spent time in some places where the bosses thrived on ego. Places where power was a god.
I’ve seen retail stores with managers that were so desperate to maintain high revenue that they kept their own well-qualified employees from moving up, lest the profit machine be disrupted.
I’ve seen managers with grudges years old intentionally submarine relationships because maintaining pride was more important than forming partnerships.

Medium • August 27 2021

Vacationing During the Apocalpyse

But in the change of seasons, though you know the end of a season is coming, you do not think of something else interrupting this. You don’t consider pandemics because, well, pandemics only exist in movies. In fictional books. In a previous century. In third-world countries.

Medium • June 1 2021

What the Church Can Learn from Target

Churches have a long history of poor choices in regard to race relations. Whether it's willful ignorance or a staunch refusal to take on empathy and listen to others, the stereotype of many churches is one of exclusivity. The church has a persona of a country club where the members all look eerily the same.

RELEVANT • May 13 2021

Why Is Praying So Hard?

I’ve fought to pray. I’ve deserted my world and crawled into the dark recesses of a corner closet thinking that would be the way to get a good word to God, and maybe, just maybe, get a word back. A magical reply.

Medium • April 21 2021

Anthony Bourdain’s Final Quest for Beauty

For Anthony Bourdain, it was the beauty in the culture of a place, in the people that created the food, not the food itself. The people who spent decades perfecting a dish, the ones who began prepping a meal at 5:00 a.m. while the world slept so that at 5:00 p.m. the world could enjoy it. Those were the people who Bourdain celebrated and enjoyed meeting. They held the beauty to be discovered.

Medium • February 4 2021

The Most Important Skill to Teach Your Children

Kids are going to mess up. They’re going to have bad attitudes. They’ll have the habit of not doing what they’re told to do. They’ll push back, even in the most passive-aggressive of ways, to let you know their displeasure with certain chore requests.

Medium • April 17 2021

Charleston Church Leaders Tell Why Easter Matters

April 12, 2020, was another gorgeous spring day in Charleston. The sun rose through a few scattered clouds atop the horizon of the Atlantic, casting rays of light on Waterfront Park and the market, then down East Bay and King and Meeting streets. Patches of light filtered through vast canopies of weeping willows and thick-branched oaks. It was a perfect morning, but many are in the low country.
This spring morning in April 2020 was unique for two reasons. It was Easter Sunday, and hardly anyone was outside of their homes to experience it.

Medium • April 9 2021

Selling Bug Killer to Women

My decade of sales experience provided many opportunities for me to fall flat on my face when selling to customers. It was clear when I wasn’t prepared: customers would look at me confused or with a slight grin and walk away, usually buying nothing or, even worse, my competitor’s product.

Bleacher Report • January 3 2010

What If...The Charlotte Hornets Never Traded Kobe Bryant?

Hindsight is always 20/20, but it proves even more gut-wrenching when you're talking about saving a city's franchise.

In the 1996 NBA draft, the now relocated Charlotte Hornets selected Kobe Bryant with their 13th selection overall. They would eventually trade his draft rights away to the Lakers for center Vlade Divac.

Medium • April 5 2021

3 Ways To Keep the Critics Out of Your Head

Whether it’s from a place of jealousy, insecurity, or just plain meanness, haters can really get inside your head. They’ll attack your motives. They’ll rip your methods. And if you do taste success, they’ll whisper to others how nobody really cares about what you did anyway.

RELEVANT • November 21 2016

5 Ways to Move Forward in American's Hyper-Partisan Culture

There you are, smack in the middle of a holiday meal with your family.

All the aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and other relatives you haven’t seen since last year are gathered around the turkey. As you pass the cranberry sauce, enjoying casual conversation with the one cousin you actually have things in common with, it happens.

Someone from the other side of the table yells, “Well, I know we’re all glad Hillary didn’t win the election!”

Cue the awkward silence.

Medium • February 24 2021

Life’s 5 Most Important Things, according to Al Davis

There’s a lot to say in 2021 about what’s important. Flags across the nation are moored at the halfway point of their poles as a symbol of the somber realization: 500,000 people are dead now that, at this time a year ago, likely hadn’t even heard the term coronavirus, likely hadn’t experienced a quarantine, and probably never wore a mask to buy their groceries at the local Publix.