A Real Halloween Alternative

491 years ago today, a man by the name of Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg and sparked what is known as the Reformation of the church which ultimately led to the divide of Protestantism from the Roman Catholic Church.  However you do Halloween at your house, how about [...]

Praying is Spiritual Work

Praying is spiritual work; and human nature does not like taxing, spiritual work. Human nature wants to sail to heaven under a favoring breeze, a full, smooth sea. Prayer is humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory, and signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and blood to bear. [...]

Acts 29 Recommended

We just received our Acts 29 Assessment Report and the result is: Recommended with Conditions.  This was the result we were praying for.  From the way I understand it, Acts 29 assesses you into one of four categories:

Approved
Recommended with Conditions
Potential
Not Recommended

An assessment rating of one means you’re God’s gift to the church, you’re in, and [...]

Dressing Error

“Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.”
–Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Volume 1 (Peabody, MA: Prince Press), p58 (quoting Irenaeus of Lyons)

Reflections from Bootcamp – Day 4 (Assessment)

Meg and I had our Acts 29 assessment yesterday as a concluding portion of the Bootcamp / LEAD Conference here in St. Louis.  It went really well.  Our assessors (Bob, Hunter, Sam, and Cole) are all really great guys whom have easily won my respect.
Our assessment was at 1:30pm yesterday and I was pretty anxious [...]

Reflections from Bootcamp – Day 3

The Acts 29 Bootcamp / Lead Conference has now come and gone.  All that remains is our assessment today at 1:30pm.  I’m sure I’ll post on some reflections from the assessment process, but before I provide my Day 3 reflections, I just want to state how great this conference was.  I cannot overemphasize the openness, [...]

Reflections from Bootcamp – Day 2

Day 2 of the Acts 29 Bootcamp / Lead Conference far exceeded any expectations that I had.  This was by far one of the most helpful and productive days I’ve experienced of late.  Darrin Patrick started things off and sort of set the tone for the day with a message on “Gospel Centered Repentance.”  In [...]

Reflections from Bootcamp – Day 1

Day 1 of the Acts 29 Bootcamp / LEAD Conference was great.  I connected with several great people including a guy named Euan from outside of London and a guy named Cheech (no, Chong wasn’t there) who shares a passion for the lost in Lincoln, Nebraska.  It’s a pretty remarkable experience to be amongst about [...]

Acts 29 Bootcamp This Week

This is a fairly big week for me – one of the biggest.  Beginning tomorrow afternoon I’ll be at an Acts 29 bootcamp / conference hosted here in St. Louis by The Journey.  The bootcamp/conference runs through Wednesday; Meg and I will then be assessed on Thursday afternoon as I’m considered as a candidate for [...]

Prayer: The Best of Our Time

“The praying which makes a prayerful ministry is not a little praying put in as we put flavor to give it a pleasant smack, but the praying must be in the body, and form the blood and bones. Prayer is no petty duty, put into a corner; no piecemeal performance made out of the fragments [...]

Steeping in James – 2:21-26

If my count is right, this is Week 5 of the Steeping in James study (although I haven’t posted anything with regard to the study for a couple of weeks).  If you haven’t been following along, you can click here to get to all of the Steeping in James posts.  You can also read the [...]

Sermon on Cross, Grace, and Kingdom

This past Sunday I preached a sermon on Cross, Grace, and Kingdom focusing on Ephesians 2:1-10 and attempting to boil down Christianity to a central focus of the Cross of Christ, the Grace of God, and the Kingdom of God.  My basic intent was to cut to the heart of Christianity and challenge the congregation [...]

Obama, Abortion, and Donald Miller – Oh My

Donald Miller (Christian author of one of my favorite books, Blue Like Jazz) has taken to campaigning for Barack Obama and is creating a bit of a stir in evangelical circles.  Most of the stir is surrounding the topic of abortion.  If any of this interests you, I’d suggest giving this interview a read – [...]

Every Christian Should Watch This…

and repent.
I’m not one for drama and church (that’s just not my cup of tea), but this is good depiction for today of what Jesus’ brother was talking about in James 3.
(HT: Joe, JT)

Men: Take Hold of the Church

Hearty, heroic, compassionate, fearless martyrs must the men be who take hold of and shape a generation for God. If they be timid time servers, place seekers, if they be men pleasers or men fearers, if their faith has a weak hold on God or his Word, if their denial be broken by any phase [...]

Driscoll on Stay-at-Home Moms

My wife and I have been watching and being encouraged by Pastor Mark Driscoll’s (Mars Hill Church in Seattle) sermon series on Song of Solomon.  Our current trend is to watch the sermon together on Thursday nights.  In the last one we watched (Part 2 of the series), Driscoll takes up the topic of stay-at-home [...]

What the Church Needs Today

I picked up a book a while back that just began reading very slowly as apart of my morning devotions. It is by E.M. Bounds who lived in the mid 19th century. It’s a short book and appears thus far to be packed full of timeless encouragement. In preparing this post, I [...]

Mars Hill Music

I know jack about music except for that I know what I like when I hear it.  Lately, I’ve been taking in some new music from the Mars Hill Church Website.  I’d highly encourage you to go check out some of the work of their extremely talented bands, all singing praise to the Creator and [...]