Missional Living
My biggest Fear is That I Won’t Matter
This is what I told my congregation three years ago… I said, “One of my biggest fears is that I won’t matter and that our church won’t matter.” This confession came along with a call to action. It was a call to love our enemies, care for the poor, live reconciled with one another, be…
Read MoreThe (Missional) Vocation of Marriage
A lot is currently being said about marriage these days due to the recent publication of two books on marriage by two famous (and/or infamous) pastors. I won’t link to one of them because I just don’t think it would be helpful, but I will link to the other one because (while I haven’t read…
Read MoreWhat's for Breakfast?? (Thoughts on Selfishness)
It seems to me that the world trains us to be pretty selfish, individualized people. Thomas Merton writes about this as he describes the problem of pride, “The self must be treated as if, not merely in feeling but in actual fact, the whole universe revolved around it…If I am the center of the universe,…
Read MoreHola! Send Us to Guatemala!
This summer we (both Melanie and I) will be heading to Guatemala City with ten other people from our church. From June 20-26 we will be serving some of the poorest people in the world in Central America’s largest slum called La Limonada. We need to raise approximately $600 total for this trip and we…
Read MoreBarna Describes Casual Christians
George Barna, in a recent interview sent to me from your friend and mine JR Briggs, says the following when talking about the group he calls “casual Christians”… Casual Christianity is faith in moderation. It allows them to feel religious without having to prioritize their faith. Christianity is a low-risk, predictable proposition for this tribe,…
Read MoreThe Mob.
Who do you get when you take a poor person in a slum in Ndola Zambia and give them… a house, a fenced in back yard, a two car garage, cable television with a DVR, two cars for that garage, and a job that pays me well but makes me work 50+ hours a week?…
Read MoreTalking About Money in the Church (Part 3)
Over the last few weeks I’ve been writing a bit on how I have been talking through 2 Corinthians 8 with our community during our offering time. (You can read the others posts here) The last two time we covered verse 1 and verse 2. This week we get to verse three. Here they are…
Read MoreLive Blogging: Financial Freedom / Budgeting Seminar with David Briggs
Notes…. The average households under 35 are saving -16% of their income. Financial freedom has nothing to do with our income. The law of guaranteed wealth: Spend less than you make for a long period of time. Man, these powerpoint slides are from around 1980 or something. Someone needs to read Presentation Zen! 🙂 Comparison to others…
Read MoreSuper Christians? Nope, Just Normally Obedient.
We’ve spent the last couple days hanging out with Tim and Jenn Fidanzo who are from Portland, OR. We met them on Sunday morning when they showed up at our church. About four months ago, Tim and Jenn felt that God was calling them to give up to very well paying jobs, sell their belongings,…
Read MoreDoes God Close Doors? Or Are We Scared of Difficulty?
You may have heard the saying, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Well a simple search of the internet tubes you’ll find that there are many other versions of this. For example, when the going gets tough… the tough get knitting!” (my wife would be included in this) slime molds start synthesizing”…
Read More