11/17/2025
Power Without Conscience?
I ran out of room for this vignette in Sunday’s sermon. Remember the quote that could be the headline for Ahab and Naboth: “All that’s needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” The following reinforces that truth.
At a leadership conference, the CEO of a mid-sized company shared a simple practice that changed their culture.
In every meeting, she kept one empty chair at the table. “That chair,” she said, “represents the person not in the room—the employee who doesn’t feel safe to speak up, the customer who will be affected by our decisions, the community our work impacts.”
One day a manager complained, “We can’t keep worrying about that empty chair—it slows everything down.”
She replied, “It’s supposed to slow us down. Power without conscience moves too fast.”
That’s what Ahab forgot. His power wasn’t for him—it was for others. Every one of us has an “empty chair” somewhere: someone affected by our choices, our silence, or our compassion. The story of Ahab reminds us: When God gives you a seat at the table, don’t forget who else is supposed to be there.
Should we keep an empty pew or an empty chair in worship? It could be a reminder of those who aren’t here yet. The lonely, the doubters, those who don’t have the ‘right kind of clothes,’ the grieving, the shamed, and the sinners who were just like us before we came to know the living Christ. Think about it. You know I am.
Archived Posts
Not Just for Parents
Our current sermon series is about How To Talk Parent, but it doesn’t require any of us to be parents to appreciate the bits of wisdom OUR parents shared with us growing up.
If Not Higher
Here’s a story I wanted to use when talking about ‘what you do when no one is looking’ yesterday. It’s a wonderful illustration of what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:1-6—do what you do because of who you want to be, not so that others will take notice and praise you.
The Perfect Church
There is an old joke about the perfect church. We talked just a little about the perfect pastor, but turnabout is fair play. It goes like this:
The Clothes You Wear
Sunday I talked about Joshua the High Priest having his filthy clothing replaced by a cleaned and beautiful garments. I also used the illustration of a boy becomes a dragon—who ‘wears’ dragon scales—and is stripped of those scales in order to be restored to a boy. In fact, I could have done the whole sermon around all the clothing imagery in scripture.
What just missed the cut for Sunday’s Sermon
Naaman’s servants may actually become one of the hidden gems of the sermon. They say, essentially: “If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, you would have done it.”
One of the Longest Benedictions I Ran Out of Time to Share
Maybe you know the story of how Joseph and Mary accidentally left Jesus at the gas station on their way home from Jerusalem. Well, not the gas station bathroom in Jesus’ case. Joe and Mary are far down the road before they realize Jesus isn’t with them...
So many quips and quotes...
So little time to preach
I wonder what Mary and Martha’s phones might look like:
* Martha = the open browser with 27 tabs
* Mary = the single window that matters
* Psalm 46 = God saying, “Close the tabs.”