Author: Jon Gauger

What does true greatness look like? I think I saw a glimpse this week. Imagine a training conference for Christian media professionals from all across West Africa. Envision197 participants from 15 countries all gathering in Accra, Ghana to learn practical techniques in radio, video, leadership, and social media.  Moody Radio calls it the “Global Partners Training.”  The conference featured energetic presenters, powerful worship, great preaching at night…not to mention delicious meals.  Over the course of the conference, I figured they served a total of 2000 meals to our group. Unlike typical American conference centers, there were no “built in” facilities…

They say that we either waste time, use time, or invest time. Several weeks ago, my wife and I enjoyed the weekend company of five year old Joslynn, our granddaughters. The little blonde kindergartner is reluctant to leave our house on Saturday.  Doesn’t even like to get changed out of her pajamas. But she loves to make paper airplanes, which we take great pains to color before folding and flying.   Joslynn is not content until we’ve created not just one or two planes, but a fleet sufficient in number to replace an entire wing of the United States Air force.  But…

Toxic baloney.  When it comes to worldwide media coverage of Israel, that’s increasingly the diet we’re being fed.   And that toxic baloney is slowly poisoning the hearts and minds of millions. Example #1: The Land Listening to today’s media, one gets the notion that Israel is a greedy land grabber, reluctant to share with anyone else. The fact is, the Arab world is nearly 800 times the size of Israel. Not eight or even eighty.  But eight HUNDRED times as large.   So why is Israel being pressured to give up the tiny slice it has to the many who have…

Gizmos and gadgets. You'll see a ton of them if you go camping. Over Memorial Day, I couldn't help but notice the massive amounts of stuff people trotted out to their campsites. There were all kinds of ingenious quick-shade gizmos.  Few who lugged them out and set them up could resist the urge to hang from them cute little lights of various themes.. Then there were more traditional dining canopies—their netted walls and zippered doors defying the most eager of flies a share in a meal in the great outdoors. I saw all kinds of cooking implements.  Things for which…

Time capsules—we've all seen these eclectic collections stuffed into cornerstones of new buildings in an attempt to give future generations a cultural snapshot of a previous era.  My wife and I discovered that we actually own a time capsule—our pop-up camper, also known as a tent trailer.  For the uninitiated, it's a metal box with a roof that cranks up, revealing canvas sides and a set of beds on each end.   It's like a tent—only much nicer. But more than a decade ago, we upgraded to a hard side trailer known as a fifth wheel.  It's nicer yet.  Thus, for…

Sin. “Everybody” says “nobody” talks about it anymore. So I’m about to. Sin is falling short of God’s perfection, His holy standards.  The Bible teaches that “all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory” (Romans 3:23).   No Christian would argue that “the wages (or results) of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Most of us are comfortable acknowledging the wrongness of sin, its penalty, and the way out of sin God offers through Christ.  But acknowledging our sin in the nitty gritty of life…that’s a different story….

Why do we like our music so loud? Go to a concert—whether rock, pop, country or Christian—and your ears are almost melted off by the end of the evening. Go to most restaurants that are considered “in”….and chances are the music is cranked up so loud that you have to yell to carry on a conversation. Driving an expensive car is not enough to be truly cool.  What you need is a subwoofer that’ll blow out glass.  LOUDNESS.  That’s what makes you cool. And the question, again, is why? Well in the restaurant world, there actually are some answers.  Research…

Have you heard the story of Irena Sendler from World War II? When Hitler took over Irena’s beloved Poland, he set up ghetto camps where Jewish families lived before being crammed into cattle cars and hauled off to concentration camps where most died. But Irena Sendler’s heart was touched by the plight of the Jewish people, especially their young children. She knocked on Jewish doors in the Warsaw ghetto and, in Sendler's own words, "tried to talk the mothers out of their children."   Irena offered an escape from near certain death, offering to take the little ones to Roman Catholic…

Do you and I worship “niceness? I say…quite possibly. As Americans, we prefer nice churches in nice neighborhoods with nice seats in nice auditoriums. Gone the days of squawky P.A. Systems, our churches rumble with the latest and greatest in audio gear.  The sound is…pretty nice.  The job of doing PowerPoint and creating video clips is now the domain of a “Pastor of Visual Arts.”   The stuff on the screen, frankly, looks pretty nice.  Nothing wrong with any of that.  But niceness—as a frame of reference—can go too far.  It comes to a crash up against an old hymn that’s…

Where’s all the music? When I fill in as host for Moody Radio’s morning show, we do a feature called “Breakfast for the Soul.”  Essentially, it’s a brief devotional that I try to follow up with a song that fits the reading.    But I’m often stumped. Example? Where is the chorus that reminds us fasting is the expected behavior of a normal Christian life?  Ever heard a song about the persecuted church?  Or loving people living a homosexual lifestyle?  Good luck finding that kind of stuff. So I’ve taken the liberty of crafting an opening verse or chorus on some…