Dave Burchett is an Emmy Award-winning television sports director. Dave has directed college basketball and football for nearly thirty years. He has directed Texas Ranger’s major league baseball telecasts for over twenty-eight seasons and had the thrill of televising one of Nolan Ryan’s no-hit games and Ryan’s 300th win. He and his wife, Joni, are former staff members of Campus Crusade’s Athletes in Action. They currently reside in Garland, Texas where Joni is a Special Education Coordinator specializing in elementary students. Dave and Joni are the parents of three sons. Matt and his wife Holly live in Waco, Texas. Matt is a graduate of the Peabody School at Vanderbilt with a Masters in Higher Education Administration. He currently is Director of Student Activities at Baylor University. Holly is a speech therapist with a Masters from the University of Texas-Dallas and is working with speech therapist students at Baylor University. Scott and his wife Caroline live in McKinney, Texas. Scott works for the Frisco Roughriders AA baseball franchise as Senior Director of Partner Services. Caroline is a Kindergarten teacher in the Allen Independent School District. Brett is a Management/Entrepreneurial Business major from Baylor, becoming the third little Bear to wear the green and gold. He currently works at NetVu in Las Colinas, Texas as an R&D Project Manager/Business Analyst.
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Love the new look. are those your sheep in the photo?
Thanks Sue. Not at this point. You can subscribe to the blog. I plan on expanding in the fall with more frequent posts so stay tuned!
Blessings and grace,
Dave
Dave,
Many thanks for your writing Spiritual Fruit inventory. I read it on SF Daily Devotional: Inventorying My Fruit of the Spirit Menu.
I was a broadcast engineer for 20+ years including stints with Ch,23 in Garland and USA Radio network with Marlin Maddox in Dallas.
I am now working in the cell industry with some extremely rough tough guys and am challenged everyday with this issue of fruit inventory.
What a timely blessing to find this.
Thanks again,
Ty Miller
From one of your 10s of readers Good Luck to your Rangers !!!
Mr. Burchett – I must say I am truly enjoying reading “When Bad Christians Happen to Good People”. I read it on my 1 hour commute to downtown Los Angeles every day. I laugh so, that the other passengers look over to see what is tickling me. So, I am sure your book is going to make its way into someone elses hands. Thank you so much for your honesty and humor. My grandmother used to say “Tell the Truth and Shame the devil!” Which is exactly what you have done. Continue to do the work of the Father! I tell people all of the time – it really isn’t that difficult to be a Christian and have fun living a Christian life. I pray peace and blessings over you, your family and your ministry. If you are ever in the Los Angeles area, I’d love to come and hear you speak. Pastor Stephanie
1/5/11 You are too much fun! Hope you enjoyed the Sugar Bowl. Go OHIO.
Lisa
Hey,
Would you please consider adding an RFS Feed or and atom Feed feature to your blog so I can get automatic updates on what you post?
Thanks!
Adam
Mistyped. I meant, RSS Feed or atom Feed.
Dear Sir,
I am from Pakistan – a Bishop (Overseer) of a Gospel ministry here. I got your book “when bad Christians happen to good people” from somewhere and read it. I would like to tell you that it had a wonderful effect on my life and I am sure in the long run it will have a great and positive effect on our ministry too. Kindly have us listed on your prayer list and please pray for us too. Thank you again for writing such great book.
After reaching the weary end of my pain and bitterness, and “humbly” demanding God to heal me TODAY—-I come home to find “Bring ‘Em Back Alive” in my mailbox. (I had also gotten, Life After Church, if that gives you a hint as to where I am–and I sit on the Board, if that broadens it, as the Prayer Warrior & Coordinator, if that gives it an extra twist of incongruity)
I see this book was published in 2004—man, you could have saved the church 7 years of angry whining (I’m NOT a quiet patient) if I could have gotten this book then.
However, God has used you to answer a desperate demand for healing NOW. Thank you for being willing to drag a problem out into the open, and insisting that we look and acknowledge the wound—Often, we, the wounded, just need someone to LOOK and admit we’ve got a “boo boo”–kiss it and it will make it better!
Hi Dave
John Lynch was my link to you. Your words make me cry and renew my trust in my loving God. John & peoplelike you are helping me forgive and come away from my upbringing and-perfomance pleasing church. My church friends cannot see grace. Thanks for your forgiveness blog, I need that. I think my perfomance christian life has given me permission to judge others so harshly. I tried to read about yourdaughter on Lemonade website and could not find it. Did you give John Lynch his Baylor hat he wore on bo’s cafe? Our son went to Baylor, go Bears!We are in Phoenix this week at our kids in Surprise. Love Tx Rangers. We are from TX near Amarillo. Thanks for being real!
Becky O
I just finished reading your book “When Bad Christians Happen to Good People”; never hearing of the book until I was in our library looking for something else in the “religious” section, and just saw the name of yours, and it jumped out at me. Thank you for being refreshingly honest, and while I was hesitant to read to my husband some of the comments about people in the “limelight” because I didn’t want to focus on the negative points of them, I did laugh a lot, and read the whole chapter to him about “All God’s Children Got Souls, Even the Annoying Ones”, that was very timely to me, and hit me to the quick. Thanks for admitting in the book that you are ADD (or perhaps you just hinted at it!) it was easy, but FUN to spot in your little comments after a lot of your other remarks. I look forward to reading through your blog, and also reading your other book, and perhaps hearing you if you ever come near Roanoke, VA . Also, your comments about Bob Briner’s book were great, as that is one book in my collection that I also very much enjoyed, and felt was right on target also. Thanks again for being honest and helpful for me to identify where I need to work on things.
I have read your books. It is very interesting and have an original point of view. I can not accept everything, but it is good subject to thinking about.
I have just read an article to Fathers that you wrote for “Live It”, and was I touched by this article. I am happy that even though you were hesitant in receiving that particular room for improvement with your son, “You Did”, and look at the result. God bless you.
How much has the content changed in the new revised version of When Bad Christians Happen to Good People compared to the 2002 model?
To Randy,
Quite a bit. One chapter completely gone and about 40% new material. Plus a study guide. I am much happier with this version…for the record.
Blessings and grace,
Dave
Dave, we’ve known each other, despite having had infrequent personal contact, for quite some time. I know you to be a good person, someone our colleagues in the sports TV business all look up to.
But allow me to offer a dissenting opinion to your devotion to “God.” I believe religion is not necessary to live a righteous life. The devotion to a supreme being is a concept that is indoctrinated into our children as a means of controlling their behavior.
If I told you with the committed certainty of a true Christian that pigs could fly, you or any right thinking adult would demand proof of such an outlandish claim. So why don’t we make the same demands of the existence of the God of Abraham – a “perfect” bearded old man in the sky who created everything, hears every thought, and answers the prayers of every being in the universe!
The fact is, that no one on this planet has ever seen or heard from the Judeo/Christian/Muslim deity. This supreme being is supposed to be loving and benevolent and yet there are countless passages in the Old Testament that actually show him to be nothing short of a monster. In Numbers he commands Moses to kill a man for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Or he commands children who curse their parents to be killed.
But it’s not the actual belief in God that so revolts me. It’s the dogma and trappings of organized religion that I believe are a blight on mankind. If “God” actually had his act together would he have given his “word” differently to Jews, Christians, Muslims, and even Mormons while leaving out the Chinese, Japanese, and countless other societies?
I have a friend who sent his son to a Christian University in South Carolina. There he was taught that evolution is a lie, that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and that man lived among the dinosaurs. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Do Christians read the accounts of how flu viruses seem to mutate every year requiring new vaccines? That’s evolution! Carbon dating may not be totally accurate to 65,000,000 years which is when scientists think the dinosaurs became extinct, but it is scientifically irrefutable to 60,000 years. Man did most definitely NOT live in the time of dinosaurs. What makes the theories of the brilliant Stephen Hawking on the creation of the universe have any less verisimilitude than a 2,000 year old book written by the most primitive of people, all of whom thought the Earth was flat and the center of the universe.
Two years ago, despite my atheism, I made a trip to the Vatican to see what is known to be the largest art collection in the world. Why the Catholic church needs such treasure is beyond me. But here is what I saw on my way to St. Peters. Dozens and dozens of old, poor, sick and hungry Catholics begging just outside the Vatican walls. But past the Swiss Guard shack is one of the most opulent churches on the planet. It made my wife so mad, she could barely contain herself.
Atheists are the most vilified people in our society. Christians like to tell me I’m damned and have no chance of “going to heaven.” But just what is heaven? Is it a place where we sit around and just talk to God about…stuff? Does every golf shot I take on Heavenly Links go in the hole? Will I never again argue with another being? Is there television with Fox Sports in heaven? Will I know the score of games before they’re played? If heaven exists, clearly no one knows what eternity there will be like.
And I firmly believe with all my heart that the Christian concept of hell does not exist. No one will burn for eternity as the devil laughs. The closest thing to hell is the terrible state of this country – its greed, crime, drugs, discrimination, and religious zealotry. Like every great society in human history: the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and others, ours too is headed for failure. And belief in the God of Abraham won’t change that.
I agree with the great writer and ethicist Christopher Hitchens who says, “Religion…spoils…everything.” How can any woman of conscience see the mistreatment of women in the Muslim world and not be incensed? My wife and I saw a Muslim woman in a full burqua on a hot summer day at Tokyo Disneyland where the heat and humidity was stifling for those of us in casual clothes. But the Muslim husband seemed unconcerned with what must have been extremely uncomfortable for his wife. Or go to YouTube where you can see literally dozens of videos with religious leaders explaining to Muslim men how to “correctly beat your wife.”
Now I suspect that readers of this website will be pretty unhappy with my post. No surprise since religion has been drilled into the brains of American children since the country’s founding. Religion is like a badge of honor. But for many I believe, it is just a matter of Pascal’s Wager. “What if you’re wrong?” people ask me. “If I’m wrong, no harm, no foul” says the believer. But is he really a “believer” or is he just covering his bet?
As I wrote earlier, I have no problem with people who feel the need to accept the existence of a deity to answer questions that are still unanswerable by science. But I don’t want fundamentalist Christians or Muslims trying to dictate how I should live my life. I don’t accept their jaded dogma and prefer to live by secular law.
My daughter was not raised with religious training, though she learned about the world’s religions on school. And she is the most moral person I know. Considerate to a fault.
It’s a shame that far too many people don’t question the intellectual bankruptcy of faith, and learn to treat other people well without the threat of “God’s Wrath” compelling them to do so.
Mark,
I was an atheist myself from the 60s through 2002 or so. I never encountered any prejudice whatsoever, let alone revulsion, about my not believing in God (I didn’t make a habit of interrupting strangers’ conversations on other topics to announce it to them, mind, but nor did I make a secret it of it). Nor did any of my atheist/agnostic friends. I’m quite sure of that. It would have been (and never was) noted, as religious tolerance was and is so basic and widely accepted a common value in our shared society (the U.S.) that hate speech directed at certain people nominally because of their religious affiliation is almost always an ancient bundle of cultural/ethnic slurs & prejudices — in a word, xenophobia, that witches’ brew of ignorance, malevolence, contempt, and the division of everyone else into “us” and “others, who are inferior if not subhuman” that righteous atheists and theists and agnostics alike are righteous because/if/when they suppress the tendency in themselves, behaviorally and conceptually condition it out of their children, and refrain from acting on it, encouraging it, and in other ways destroying the fragile, precious hope that though we are all different, yet we may coexist in a peaceful society and when we speak, the act by which humans make and keep social bonds and promises, do so as presumptive equals worthy of courtesy and respect. Until some act or word demonstrates we have not learned the most fundamental things that a citizen of a pluralistic democracy must know to speak in public.
I came upon your book WBCHappen to Good People and bought it immediately; imagine my shock to read you are from Chillicothe also (I live near Va. Beach, VA., now)! Keep up the good work!
I am reading the book you authored, “Bring em Back Alive”. There are some excellent points in the book. I just finished reading the “about” profile on your site, and did not find some of the information I was looking for. My questions are; what is your Christian testimony?, what church do you attend?, what do you see as God’s purpose for you as a Christian? I pray that the Lord will continue to bless you.
Hello Mr. Burchett, my name is Jose Rodriguez and I just finished reading your book you wrote “When Bad Christians Happen to Good People” I am a christian as well, I am a Desert Storm Vet. with two daughters and a son. I too live in Garland, and have gone through a roller coaster ride since four years ago when I moved to North Texas. I have experienced alot, I mean through churches and this book has impacted my christian and spiritual life. No matter when you wrotte this book, it still impacts lives till today or at least mine. I just thought I would let you know about this and keep doing what you are doing because it does impact what God wants you to do. I can say that I thought the same exact things whent you would have your own thoughts or views, while I was reading your book. Several christian persons have crossed my paths and hurt me too but now I know I was not the only one and now I know how to deal with this issue. I really enjoyed this book along with the humor,life experiences and stories. Thank you for your time and may the King of Kings keep on blessing you abundantly.
God Bless You,
Jose.