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Help us care. Help us pray!
More persecution. How we need to lift up the Body of Christ in prayer! Bishop Angaelos, the general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, underscored the Ethiopians’ testimony. “Once again we see innocent Christians murdered purely for refusing to renounce their faith,” he said in a statement. “As Christians, we remain committed to our initial instinct…
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Spooky action at a distance
I was grateful to receive a copy of The Grave Robber by Mark Batterson this past weekend at a conference. Sunday morning as I was looking through a new stack of books, this one was in the stack and the Spirit spoke specifically: “I want to teach you about miracles now.” I love Batterson’s writing. He can tell stories so incredibly…
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Bigness and blessedness
My constant mantra in ministry to keep me somewhat centered on Christ and not just the stuff we do is this: “It’s a both/and world.” It’s analog. It’s digital. It’s huge. It’s small. It’s “attractional.” It’s “missional.” There are simply places for both. In the world. In the church. Yet, in American Christianity, we keep bumping into the same mistake.…
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Whose DNA do I carry?
The Common English Bible really adds some shock value to the thought of living IN the power of the gospel! Those born from God don’t practice sin because God’s DNA remains in them. They can’t sin because they are born from God. (1 John 3:9) If I am in Christ, do I reflect the DNA of the Father?
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Why I won’t leave the church
For all the angst out there about evangelicals “leaving church,” and there are good reasons to get disappointed (so don’t get me wrong), Scot McKnight hits another home run in an interview regarding his latest book. When asked about evangelicals “leaving the church” he says this: …as divorce is easy so leaving church is easy. The rugged commitment to one…
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Let’s at least get to the table to talk
What I long for is the honest conversation in the church. I want to drop my misconceptions and just invite a conversation. It’s incredibly difficult. For one, I can’t get those things completely out of my head. I have to work harder at simple listening. For another, when people see me, they see my labels. So, because I’m Pentecostal… or…
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Your worship stinks
Not long after I came to our current church as pastor I had a young man who came to be a part of our church from the local college where I would later teach as an adjunct. I loved that guy. Our services were awful. We didn’t have a solid worship leader at the time and our music was just…
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Praying the Lord’s Prayer… in reverse
NT Wright’s book Simply Good News challenges the reader to look at how we pray. We often pray the Lord’s Prayer in reverse. I will be looking at Wright’s analysis on “praying as good news people” in my message on Sunday. His contention is the Lord’s Prayer helps us with priorities in prayer. They are sections that can be slapped together…
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Some respect. Who knew?
Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for The New York Times. I have admired his work when he goes to Africa and writes of the horror he witnesses constantly in that area of the world. He focused on the Sudan years ago and brought a lot of awareness to the genocide in that country. In this column he openly admits he has…
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Lord, let us DREAM!
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