I remember where I was standing in St. Louis when I got the call. It’s the call many church planters have received and every church planter fears. It was a call from the YMCA, the place our church gathers for worship, telling us that we had less than 30 days to find a new place […]

As a pastor in the Nashville area—a place where churches are plentiful and Christianity is profitable—I’ve come across a lot of stories of relational pain caused by professing Christians. This reality is especially unfortunate, since most of the people I have pastored understand far more about what to do with their physical pain than they […]

Pain. It comes in many forms. Whether it’s a broken bone or a broken relationship, life in our fallen world means we all will experience some level of pain. And I think most would agree that relational pain hurts far more than any physical injury. And, perhaps, relational pain caused by professing Christians is the […]

A sixteenth-century monk, John of Landsburg, imagined Jesus speaking personally to us, in his work, A Letter from Jesus Christ. I found them convicting and encouraging. Here they are: “I know those moods when you sit there utterly alone, pining, eaten up with unhappiness, in a pure state of grief. You don’t move towards me but […]

The last two weeks I spent time amongst a few unreached people groups and unengaged, unreached people groups on the other side of the world. If you’re new to this, an unengaged, unreached people group is an ethnic group that “has no known active church planting underway.” Just a step above that is an unreached […]

The older you get, the more responsibilities you have, the harder it is to experience real community. Real community is a lot of things, but convenient ain’t one of them. If you want to see real community become a reality in your life, I’ve found that there are a few steps that need to be […]

It’s a convenient time to be alive. We don’t have to talk on phones connected to the wall, we can talk anywhere at anytime. We don’t have to wait for the 5 o’clock news, we can get it instantly on our phones. We don’t have to wait in line at the local Blockbuster for a […]

Elizabeth Bunyan was an incredible woman of God. She was the second wife of John Bunyan, a well known pastor from the 1600’s. She married John after his first wife died. Unfortunately, just a couple of years after Elizabeth’s marriage to John, he was put in jail for preaching the gospel. This left her–an English […]

Just about everybody is interested in how to change for the better. We make resolutions, try to create new habits, start a new diet, and any other number of things that we hope will change our lives. Unfortunately, at the very same time, smaller and smaller amounts of people—even professed Christians—believe the church is a […]

We are incredibly gifted at making the worst choice seem like the best choice. Our sinful tendencies—our flesh—can easily make the least satisfying way, seem appetizing (Gal. 5:17). You might say our flesh advertises like it’s serving a Stony River steak, but in reality it always serves Taco Bell “meat.” That’s why it’s so important […]