Chicago Trip

I'm gonna be helping lead a team of Sr. High students who will be serving in Chicago this week. We partner with First Christian Church and By The Hand Club for Kids. Both are making a huge difference in their communities, and are doing some major Kingdom work. They are …

Reflecting & Praying

Yesterday was busy. Really busy. My day started early, was spent rushing to get ready for a lesson and our Chicago trip, and I had a meeting and counseling appointment sandwiched in between. We had a great discussion with a visiting friend until 1:00am, so this morning …

I Didn't Mean Anything By It - I Promise

Yesterday we tackled the question, "Is Jesus the Only Way to God?" Some cool things resulted, and we were able to help some people. (The sermon should be on-line this afternoon.)
But a few people pointed-out something funny that happened - and it was completely …

Urbanly-Retarded

We all know people who are socially-retarded in some way or another. They aren't bad people. They mean well. They just aren't quite aware of their surroundings and the norms. Sometimes they lack any sort of awareness of etiquette. If you don't know of their condition, …

Coincidence?

Late last night I me-up with some great friends to hang-out at the bowling alley. My bowling was horrible (I failed to break 100 – no surprise). The hot dog I ate was equally horrible, but it smelled so good. But the time with friends was priceless.

One lane over …

Beautiful Collision: Related Texts

Our series got-off to a great start yesterday. It's titled "Beautiful Collision: Holiness Meets Humanity" (yes, it's inspired by David Crowder's album). We are studying the book of John and I wanted to list some passages related to the sermon. There are many more, but …

What Goes into a Sermon

I can't quite describe the feeling that I have after giving a sermon that I've worked extra hard at preparing. I typically spend about 15 hours of prep per sermon, but lately that's been going up. The sermon I preached on John 1 took about 35 hours of prep, which …

Ethiopian Dinner

We've made some new friends who adopted a little girl from Ethiopia about a year ago. They have been very kind and have connected us with others who have been or who are in the same process. Tonight they invited about 5 families over and we made Ethiopian food. It was a …

Breakfast

I'm sure you are like me and have the opportunity to watch countless videos each week thanks to youtube and others. I'm pretty selective and rarely do because time is valuable, but I saw one last night from a friend who hardly ever posts videos. I clicked on the video …

The Force

I've been studying John 1 over the past month. It begins with, "In the beginning was the Word..." That phrase is packed full of meaning. People for generations had philosophized about the meaning of "Word," well before John was written (Socrates & Plato included).
It …

Thoughts on the Oscars

I was thrilled that Slumdog Millionaire was the big winner. It was refreshing to see people who win who didn't come with a gazillion Hollywood dollars behind them. It was also good to see a movie win that told a great story. No amount of glitz or special effects can …

The Best Sound in the World

Last night we had a family outing. The night started at On The Border, where we are mastering the art of eating cheap. Beth & I split a large combo meal, the boys split a meal, and we all eat lots of the free tortillas and chips. Ends up being $3-$4 a person for some …

Back in the Game

Virb 2.oh has been released & I like how it's looking. I'll be playing around with it some to see if it's going to be what I'm going to stick with. Version 1.0 wasn't initially set-up for blogging, and thus had some shortcoming. Feel free to give me your input about the …

Important Info

Wanted to let you all know that Virb will soon be Virb 2.0 This means that this site will be down starting Saturday afternoon & it won't be back-up until mid-week (at least that is their guess). It will end up being better, sleeker & more functional so I'm excited …

Chicago

I'm headed to Chicago for several reasons:
1. Participate in the Urban Conversation. It's a discussion that began last year on how the church can best meet urban needs.
2. Set-up work for our Missions trip to Chicago in a month.
3. Preaching at First Christian Church …

Churchy: Holy Priesthood

Dave & I preached yesterday about the "Holy Priesthood" and "The Roles of Ministers." You can hear it here. It was a bit of a two-fold sermon, but the two ideas do belong in the same conversation. I promised a list of Scriptures that could further your study. Here they …

Churchy: The Staff

We spent about five hours today putting our heads and hearts together to prepare for the next few months of ministry at HP. It was a productive and good time. I can't imagine trying to do that with a group of people who don't get along. Fortunately, I don't live in that …

Churchy: The Status Quo

Mark Batterson blogged, "A couple decades ago a pair of psychologists named Samuelson & Zeckhauser discovered a phenomenon they dubbed the Status Quo Bias. Simply put: most of us keep doing what we've been doing without giving it much thought."
This isn't always bad, …