We had a funny moment here in our house the other night. My oldest was filling out a form to take the ACT in the coming weeks. She’s only in the 7th grade, but I like that they start taking it early. She was filling out the form and she called me into the living room. When I got there, she
And everything that is hurt, everything
That seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
Maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged
Is in Him transformed.
I doubt there is a more used and less understood word in the contemporary church than “missional.” Missional is not about being better at being Kodak in a digital photograph world.
The question remains. Do we really know the High God? How would our lives change if we really understood the fact that the God made real in Jesus Christ – the God of the world – loves each tribe and nation equally? How would that understanding change how we looked at other tribes and clans – even in our own
J. C. Albert has to be one of the greatest followers of Jesus I’ve ever met. I met him in India in 2012. He was the most open, loving, friendly guy and he had these wonderful stories to tell of adventures with Jesus. He has visited and shared the good news of Jesus Christ in nearly 3,000 tribal villages in
Now that we’ve celebrated God’s decision to put on flesh and bone and move into the neighborhood, we’re left with the question, what do we do now?
At our downtown ministry this week, I watched a precious soul rock an invisible baby while “Away in a Manger” was being sung and I was overwhelmed by the values of God and his preference for the poor. It is completely antithetical to our human nature to seek after and invest in the hidden places where the poorest of the
“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” We all have something in each list. Tonight, I want to remind you that life is a complex mixture of all three kinds of experiences…good to celebrate, bad to grieve, and ugly to heal.
The word became flesh and lived among us.
The King of all creation was born as a lowly, disregarded nobody-baby. In part, that was because Mary and Joseph were nobodies. Joseph was a craftsman from the small town of Nazareth in Galilee. Mary was a young woman with an apparently questionable character. Still, they were the nobodies God wanted to use, and that was a surprise.
Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. Colossians 3:16 (NLT) In many parts of the world, governments set aside a day dedicated to giving thanks. In the United States that day falls
Why might people who are poor be brokenhearted? God calls our actions and our attitudes to be right toward people with few resources.
“When Christ is squeezed from the Body of Christ by our own priorities and agenda as a congregation or through our busyness as leaders or disciples, what is left is little more than a corpse masquerading as a church.”
God has gently reminded me more than once that the onus for what he has promised is not on me. It is on him.
I was recently visiting my son who is away studying at University, and we attended Sunday worship at a church near his school. After the service, quite a few people stopped us to thank us for showing up to church. The congregation was made up of mostly older members who seemed thankful, relieved, and overjoyed that people from a younger
“Ruth’s life is not living up to her expectations. She is a childless widow, living in a foreign land, dependent on the favor of strangers. Enter the Redeemer – the one who can rewrite the ending of a story gone wrong, buying back tragedy and making way for restoration.”
It is October, which for pastors is Clergy Appreciation Month. Recently I polled clergy on their experiences of Pastor Appreciation in the midst of ministry. The results managed to surprise me. I was curious to know answers to what I thought was a fairly straightforward, simple question: what’s one of the most meaningful gifts or gestures you received for Pastor
As a Mexican, I did not know I was a Hispanic, too. The term “Hispanic” refers to people from Spanish-speaking countries and, in the United States, it is a technical demographic label or distinction used to identify people from a Spanish-speaking origin. Since in Mexico the primary language is Spanish, the term “Hispanic” is not commonly used to identify Spanish-speaking
When change “just happens,” it never happens to move the organization’s goals forward.
“Today, patience is one of the greatest gifts we can give others.”
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