When we kicked off the new year and began our series in the Gospel of Mark, we started off with a science experiment. If you were with us that Sunday, I asked everyone to put two fingers along their jugular and raise their hand if they...
At some point, it has to be about behavior, right? This is an important question to consider alongside an emerging posture we have spoken about over the past few years, the posture of belonging over behavior.Â
Belonging over behavior ...
Jesus as our comforter… This is a weird way to start a blog in the midst of our Defiance series, especially with all the sermons I have preached that call us away from comfort-based decisions. There is so much in scripture that present...
Our Defiance series this past Sunday saw Jesus recast the legal paradigm of a relationship with God. Using the sabbath as the vehicle for His defiance allowed Jesus to present two possible outcomes to interacting with scripture and the...
“Whatever it be that makes us trust in ourselves that we are comparatively wise or good, so as to treat those with contempt who do not subscribe to our doctrines, or follow our party, is a proof and fruit of a self-righteous spirit.”
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Several months ago, I saw yet another in a years-long series of events that I can only characterize as the church persecuting itself. While this was not the first and definitely not the last time an event like this has occurred, it was...
As we begin this new series together, our Wednesday blog will often feel like a clearing house for all of the thoughts that surround our Sunday messages, as well as an invitation for discussion and discernment. In many respects, the pr...
Kicking off 2024, I hope your holiday season provided a restful and joyful end to 2023 and a hopeful beginning to 2024…. 2024 holds the promise of an interesting year but also gains custody of the reality that there is nothing new unde...
“Come, Holy Spirit.” It’s a dangerous prayer. In Acts 2, the Spirit was poured out on the Church. In the 200s, the early church father Origen wrote: “…The Lord himself, the Holy Spirit himself must be entreated by us to remove every cl...
“Keep the receipts!” Twice a year, on the two days that the kid year revolves around, we heard this. Every Christmas and every birthday, some adult would implore me to keep those strips of paper that seemed to hold more power than stri...
After a few weeks of weighty topics, I like to fall into an easy, more breezy subject to lighten the air and have the opportunity to stretch out into the warm and fuzzy and take a deep breath. Usually, a topic without controversy or po...
Context… what a fickle beast. When anyone begins talking about context or contextualization, my inward groan lets loose a beauty, my eyes glaze over, and I begin to play over in my mind the closing seconds of Super Bowl 32…. You know t...
