I grew up as a preacher's kid. My father was a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force before he pastored churches in the United Methodist Church and the American Baptist Association.

During my college years at the University of Pennsylvania, I attended Tenth Presbyterian Church (when James Boice was senior minister). It was an easy decision where to worship on Sundays, as my parents had attended "Tenth" when they had gone to Temple University years before, and I grew up hearing many a tale of Donald Grey Barnhouse. (A copy of his Let Me Illustrate sat atop our half-bath's toilet as reading material!)

I recall my dad once telling me that Barnhouse had read the book of Romans in its entirety every day as he preached through the book. The full import of that information really didn't hit me until I recently learned that Barnhouse took eleven years—count them, eleven years!—to preach through Romans. That's right: every day for eleven years, Barnhouse read the entire book of Romans; that's over 4,000 ...