Expectations are everything. Though not a Bible verse (I’m pretty sure), this maxim is very wise and widely used. Expectations are everything. It seems with the right expectations everything goes smoother, becomes more enjoyable or more endurable, and we stick to our goals better. We all have our own expectations, but there is one expectation …
Continue reading Why Planting A Church Is Challenging… And Why that Is A Good Thing
Do you know how your body grows? Mitosis, of course! Mitosis is your body’s natural process of duplicating its cells into more cells, thus growing and renewing your body. Amazingly, your body duplicates its smallest organism in order to make its greatest growth. To boot, Mitosis, which means “threads” (referring to the cell’s thread-like chromosomes), …
Continue reading What Mitosis and Church Plants Have In Common
Have you looked around your house lately and saw an appliance that just made you wonder… who thought this thing up and how come I can’t live without it? I’m thinking about our TVs, microwaves, vacuums, electric handmixers, convertible heat pumps and more. These are the sort of things that the first few people who …
Continue reading What Is an Interest Meeting… and What Is It Good for?
We hear passages like Matthew 18:15, “If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him…”, and roiling questions rush into our minds: Who am I to judge? What will their response be? Isn’t this a pastor’s job? What if I do more harm than good? Whichever the case, it all reduces down to one …
We know the story well: David vs. Goliath. A true underdog classic. Against all odds, the newly anointed shepherd-boy-king bravely faces the evil warrior-giant in battle when no one else would. With a holy and public zeal, he defends the name of his God from disgrace and his countryman from Philistine slavery or worse. Rejecting …
Continue reading You Are Not Your Own Knight in Shining Armor
Jeremiah 17:8 - He will be like a tree planted by water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit. Anxiety may be king in our day. Its influence is inescapable, …
Continue reading God’s Faithfulness in the Midst of Unknowns
“It is the presence of God that makes all things sweet and comfortable.” - Richard Sibbes The Puritans wrote a lot about comfort. But their idea of comfort is not the American ideal of “ease of life” or “freedom from pain”, rather they were describing the solely Christian experience of assurance. Christian assurance is the …
We have a fast-paced, achievement-oriented world. In this world we are tempted to have a distorted practice of rest: we either never rest, we rest too much, or we consider rest time as “off-duty” time. To have a healthy pattern of rest we must understand what true rest is. The Old Testament has two symbols …
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Which of these do you think is unlike the rest? I wager it is self-control. When we think of self-control we think of the ability to restrain oneself - whether that is physical, emotional, behavioral, and/or motivational - we think of diet plans, spending goals, …
Church is a blessing. The church, a local group of redeemed sinners worshipping God through loving Him and loving others, is a blessing to those who participate in it. The center of the church’s worship is Sunday morning; through prayer, singing, giving, and responding to God’s Word in faith the church collectively blesses God and …
Continue reading Raising Teens into Church Life pt. 2: Serving Others
Familyhood 