Opinion Archive

Technology is great…when it works! The church I serve as pastor livestreams its worship services and occasionally there is a glitch in the technology and our livestream is, well, a dead-stream. That happened this past Lord’s Day and was only discovered at the end of the worship service. My immediate thought? “Okay, nobody leaves! We’re going to do this worship service again!” Of course, that was my frustration talking and the thought was never vocalized. Instead, I perused the coming week in my mind to determine when I could at least record the sermon and make it available.

Political season sure does bring out some of the most unique situations.

We saw that a few weeks ago when Commissioner James Calkins did a reversal so large regarding Juana’s Pagodas and Sailor’s Grill that it should’ve been sponsored by ServPro. To reference the restoration company, it was almost like “it never even happened.”

Sports is serious business at times. Check that. Almost all the time.
We rank teams, athletes and way too often we project the odds of a young athlete being the next big thing at the college or pro level.

My wife has a gift for making up rhymes. She will observe something interesting or unusual and a moment later some clever verse will spill from her lips, usually to an improvised tune. I think to myself, we should be writing these down, but the moment passes, and her verse is lost.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn about working in the media is that for some reason the general public groups all news agencies together, almost like we have one big brain.

People who watch and read the news often look at a local journalist in the same way they see someone who works for CNN, MSNBC or Fox News.

As of this writing, with several days left in qualifying, there are 15 candidates for three seats on the Santa Rosa Board of Commissioners.

We already live in a world, at least here in Florida, where athletes can transfer freely thanks to the free agency style set-up here in the state. We are about to live in a world high school athletes can get paid.
Never did I think I’d be typing those words out in a column at any point in my lifetime. Just goes to show you to never say never.

During election season, no matter where you go, there are certain things you come to expect as a journalist.

Ribbon cuttings are twice as popular before. All of a sudden, even the smallest of shops opening is extremely important, as every politician on this side of the Mississippi River tries to squeeze their way into the photo. Free publicity baby. That’s what it’s all about.

In our weekly COMPASS leadership prayer meeting, one brother prayed for a growing sense of community in our congregation. A strong sense of community is what characterized that first congregation described in Acts 2, a sense of community so strong that it was attractive to those outside the church. Their sense of community was not self-motivated but the evidence of their unity in the Spirit together with Christ through faith in His gospel. Because that same Spirit unites believers together in Christ today, that strong sense of community is possible in any gospel-believing congregation. A recent article in The Atlantic offers a less hopeful message.

Last week, nearly every media outlet in the region met at the Santa Rosa County Emergency Operations Center to get prepared for the upcoming hurricane season. And if you haven’t seen the forecast for hurricane season in 2024, just know it ranges from bad to really bad. (Let’s hope forecasters are wrong this year.)