“Here is what I know: you don’t get to schedule trials. You don’t get to look at your calendar and plan the most convenient time for someone to die or a pandemic to drastically change your life. When you go through trials, there is an overwhelming sense of pain. Physical or emotional, it does not really matter. It just hurts. You want it to end. The expression of pain in trials is called grief.”
Read More“The world has taken God’s plan and systematically reduced sex into something that does not come close to what God intended. We have a responsibility to lead our children into the goodness and glory of what God intended sex to be or the world will.”
Read More“Most Sundays, I come stumbling in, desperate for encouragement, community, or a fresh reminder of God’s character and grace. But this is what I know: my children may sometimes see me struggling to make it to church, but they will see me prioritize it. Meltdowns may be seconds away, as lunch and nap times are pushed off, but as a family, we will say with certainty that our time gathered as the body of Christ was worth it. And like Megan Hill writes, ‘For the rest of their lives, they would know that Mommy and Daddy brought them to Jesus. For the rest of their lives, they would be changed because the Lord took them in his arms and interceded for their souls.’”
Read MoreNever before in ministry have I experienced a year where the church has faced more divisive issues. We are bombarded by the discussions, and social media has only increased the noise. Everyone has an opinion. It is easy to want to retreat.
As the lead pastor and elder of Christ Church, I have not been able to retreat from the chaos of one particular issue: our church’s response to the Coronavirus.
Read MoreThis is the problem: the church has spent an inordinate amount of time discussing biblical sexuality and financial stewardship, but we rarely talk about power. People step into roles of leadership without any conversation about the stewardship of power. We should not be surprised by the slew of abuses of power that we see all over the Kingdom of God.
In marriage. In ministry leadership. In parenting. In workplaces.
We need to promote conversations about right biblical stewardship of power. We need to think about how we are stewarding power. You have power just because you are alive. Your life will impact others positively or negatively. If your faith is in Christ, then you also have the Holy Spirit in your heart…more access to power. How are you going to steward it?
Read MoreIn this great state (and across our country), complete tribal loyalty is something we are very familiar with, and I’m not just talking about collegiate athletics. These days, it seems we are being asked to choose a new side every week: republican or democrat; pro-mask or anti-mask; black lives matter or all lives matter. Our culture has led us to believe there is no middle ground on any of these issues. You’re either all in, or all out, and the tribalization only grows stronger when there is partisan alignment on all of these issues.
As a Christian, the way I am seeing this play out on social media is very troubling. I am watching well-meaning brothers and sisters, both inside and outside of our church, passionately engaging in these cultural issues from convictions that seem to have been formed more by a tribal, political allegiance than by a spiritual allegiance. In other words, I am watching people’s political identities lead the formation of their spiritual identities when it should be the other way around.
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