Pilgrim March
Thoughts on Life as a Spiritual Journey
Connecting to One another
I just preached this past weekend on John 15:5-17 about the necessity of Christian community in order to experience the growth that comes from loving one another sacrificially. Here is the audio: [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Or, download the file here. Be the first to like. Like Unlike
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Posted in Sermon | No Comments
New is Nice
I often hear pastors and theologians disparaging new expressions of faith. They push back against new songs, new prayers, and new church structures. The sentiment is that being relevant or new compromises the gospel, which is rooted in the time-tested way of doing things. With that in mind, I found this quote about heuristic bias [...]
Posted in Spiritual Pilgrimage | 3 Comments
Why Plant Churches
“Results of a DAWN project in England found that … ‘those churches planted since 1989 had grown an average of 75% per year! By contrast churches established prior to that date averaged six percent growth per year! In other words new church plants were growing 12 times as fast as established churches!” Jim Montgomery, Then [...]
Posted in Church Planting | 3 Comments
Justification, God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision
There has been a little bit of evangelical in-fighting going on recently. Many in the traditionally reformed camp have criticized the theology of justification that N.T. Wright (and other NT scholars of his ilk) espouse. John Piper wrote a book summarizing these criticisms, and N.T. Wright replied to Piper’s book with the one I am here reviewing. [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Theology | No Comments
New York
Mary and I just got back from New York. We spent the past three days visiting friends in New Jersey and New York. Then On Sunday night, I officiated a wedding for a good college friend. Here are some pictures. The bottom pictures were taken from our hotel room of ground zero. We were directly [...]
Posted in Family, Friends | No Comments
Emerging Church Perspectives
I’ve heard a friend say that defining the emerging church is like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall. It doesn’t have any formal institution or maintain a set of doctrines or membership requirements. It is, when defined by its adherents something of a conversation that is categorized more by ethos than doctrine. The people who are a part [...]
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Fighting Fear
Fear is a terrible thing. It consumes us. It saps the life from us just like a parasite saps us of energy. When we’re afraid, everything seems harder. It makes praying harder. It makes taking a risk on a new job or relationship nearly impossible. Fear drives us inward. We only think about ourselves [...]
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A Shadow of My Former or Future Self
Every morning I get in the pool for a swimming workout, and I wish I felt as good as I did when I was still in college. Now, my splits are just a shadow of my former self. If I used to be able to swim 100s on the 1:05, now I struggle to make [...]
Life of Pi
This is a postmodern tale if I’ve ever read one. For the first hundred pages or so, I wrestled with whether or not this ludicrous story was true. The author indicates as much in his preface, but slowly I came to see even that as part of “the story.” The story is not true, as in it [...]
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Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
This is a helpful book for anyone wanting to grow in their understanding of race and racism in America. In the book Dr. Tatum defines racism as a “system of advantage based on race”. She differentiates between racism and bigotry by emphasizing the systemic nature of racism. She then calls on people to be those who resist [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Racism | 1 Comment
