The Lord has recently used both carrot and stick conversations to get me thinking about Sunday-morning worship participation. I’ll start with the “stick” and get to the “carrot” next week. This started in a meeting with other pastors from around town with one...
I was convicted recently. I was listening to a sermon by a friend and he mentioned how he had caught himself escaping to binge watching Netflix and praying less. That stung because while it isn’t Netflix for me, my distractions are just as useless. Maybe you can...
I’ve been meditating on Ecclesiastes 3:1-12 this week. This is the passage that reminds us that there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the sun. I think what has drawn me to this text is that time feels very muddled right now. For example,...
The Great Commission calls on us to “make disciples,” and I’ve been thinking about how to do that. In pondering this I’ve asked, Who made me a disciple and how did they do it? For me the answer to the first part of the question is many people. The same is probably...
The word “sin” in the New Testament is related to archery and means “missing the mark.” I find this understanding of sin helpful because it brings clarity to sin’s nature. You can miss by a little or you can miss by a lot, but a miss is a miss, and so a sin is a sin....
Perhaps the most important question for everyone to answer is also an amazingly evangelical question. Jesus himself asks the question in Matthew 16 and in Mark 8 and Luke 9. “Who do you say that I am?” This question is so important because how we answer the...
Another mass shooting, this time of children, preceded by a racially motivated mass shooting, continued war in Ukraine, and close to home there is cancer and the death of loved ones. I could go on, but I think we all are feeling the crushing weight of grief. This is...
With March madness in full swing, I’ve had basketball on the brain. But with me being me, I’ve come up with a comparison between basketball and the Christian life. Basketball requires knowledge, practice and a team, and so does the Christian life. You see, while you...
I love the story of St. Patrick and think we can learn a lot from it. Patrick came to faith through what he suffered as a slave for six years in what was then a very pagan Ireland. After escaping, Patrick was later led by the Lord to return to Ireland as a missionary...
Coming out of Ash Wednesday I fielded a couple of questions about why some Christians observe Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent while others do not. So I thought I’d share my answer more broadly. Some Christians hold back from Ash Wednesday and Lent because they...