By Eddie Pipkin My wife and I have the joy of living on a small lake. It’s just large enough for a short paddle, and the lake’s edge attracts interesting birds, sometimes an otter or even occasionally a gator. It’s nice. Straight across from us on the other side of the lake is a roadside [...]
By Eddie Pipkin I took this photo a few weeks ago at Clearwater Beach. I’m really into sandcastles. I’ve built hundreds (some even with my kids when they were younger). The one in the picture is not distinctive in any way – it’s a nice effort by some nice folks on a spring break getaway. [...]
By Eddie Pipkin My wife got her Mother’s Day gift a couple of weeks early when her long-dreamed home modification became a reality. We now have a half-bath on the lower level of the house where all the TV watching happens. This was an improbable development. A Florida basement is rarer than a manatee, so [...]
By Eddie Pipkin As more and more friends and family are vaccinated, and the world desperately lurches towards normal, my calendar is filling up with catch-up dates: gatherings to catch up with folks we haven’t seen in way too long and events to make up for things that we weren’t able to be part of [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Time for the Pipkin hacienda to get a new roof. I did all my due diligence, got my estimates (ouch!), and chose a local roofing company we felt really good about. We got to the stage of filling out all the contract paperwork, and when the time came, we were ready with [...]
By Eddie Pipkin I headed over to the charming berg of Dunedin, Florida for a post-Easter getaway with a couple of friends earlier this week, and I had talked these guys into bringing some bikes, because Dunedin is famous for straddling the Pinellas Trail, the locus of lots of cool little eateries and watering holes [...]
By Eddie Pipkin I was hanging out with some Middle Schoolers last weekend at their (safely socially distanced) Sunday night youth gathering when the time came for them to break out into small groups. I’ve been working with youth in some capacity for more than 30 years, but in this case I had no role [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Kindness is not the first thing that comes to mind when we consider the pathway to corporate success. Cutthroat competition and a “succeed or die” mentality produce cultures known less for empathy and more for manipulation, strong arm tactics, and fighting your way to the top. A recent article from Fast Company [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Overspilling trash cans, overpacked suitcases, overloaded trailers, and overtaxed wifi networks! Seems like everywhere I look in the past couple of weeks, people are trying to cram too much of whatever into too tiny a space. This has been true in ministry, too: overscheduled calendars, overstuffed emails, overdone sermons, and overcooked ideas [...]
By Eddie Pipkin Tunnel vision, rabbit holes, wearing blinders, and being unable to see the forest for the trees. These are all ministry problems: we get so locked on a ministry perspective that we lose sight of the bigger picture. For churches with a physical campus (which is the preponderance of churches), this ill-aimed, lopsided [...]
