How We Serve Each Other on Sundays

kaleo, spiritual life - 19 August 2010 - 1 Comment

As we explore together at Kaleo how the Gospel affects our view of the church community, I wanted to share parts of  a great article by Colin Marshall (read in it’s entirety here) that deals with how we serve and minister to each other on Sunday mornings. While there are countless ways we can do [...]

The Pew Prayer

kaleo, pastoral care, spiritual life - 17 August 2010 - 2 Comments

For the next two weeks at Kaleo, we’re talking about how the Gospel affects our view of the church community. I recently came across a great article by Colin Marshall that talks about how viewing ourselves as a vital part of a church community affects the way we view something as basic as attending worship [...]

Jesus Give Our Work New Expectency

cool work - 13 August 2010 - 2 Comments

knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
(Colossians 3:24-25 ESV)
Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving [...]

Jesus Give Our Work New Passion

cool work - 12 August 2010 - 1 Comment

As we read Colossians 3:22-23, we see that our day-to-day work is given a new passion when the Gospel begins to take root in our hearts and lives. Where do we see that in the text? The word translated “heartily” here literally means “from the soul/heart” – the seat of affections and emotions. It’s telling [...]

Jesus Gives Our Work New Character

cool work - 10 August 2010 - 1 Comment

The past two weeks at Kaleo, we’ve been talking about how the Gospel shapes our view of our everyday work. (If you missed it, here’s the audio for week 1 and week 2). This week on the blog, we’re looking together at Colossians 3:22 – 4:1 and exploring more of what this means.
When we begin [...]

The Gospel and our Work

cool work - 6 August 2010 - 1 Comment

Right now, we’re going through a series at Kaleo called Gospel Roots, looking at what happens when the gospel truly takes root in our hearts and lives. For two weeks, we’ve been exploring how the gospel impacts the way we view our work, and so far the implications have been huge.
“What do you want to [...]

Until I Get Back

family, links - 27 April 2010 - 1 Comment

Some of you may know – Shannon is due to give birth to our second child, a son, any day now. Actually, she was due to give birth to him a week ago – we hit the 41 week mark today.
As you can imagine, this puts me in a pretty big state of flux – [...]

Would you pray this?

quotes, spiritual life - 22 April 2010 - 1 Comment

This is John Piper’s prayer for the people of Bethlehem Baptist Church as he enters into an 8 month sabbatical. I can think of nothing I’d love more than to have our Christians across the world praying this same prayer for their own churches.
Would you pray with me for a great awakening that results in [...]

Immediate and Ordinary

ministry, quotes, spiritual life - 22 April 2010 - No Comments

I would want to talk about things that are immediate and ordinary. In the kind of world we live in, the primary way that I can get people to be aware of God is to say, “Who are you going to have breakfast with tomorrow and how are you going to treat them?” I don’t [...]

Doubting Thomas and Doubting Bill

spiritual life - 6 April 2010 - 1 Comment

This week, I’m preaching from the account in John 20:24-29 that has been traditionally called the account of “Doubting Thomas”. Thomas often get’s a pretty bad rap, doesn’t he? We forget that the notion that a man claiming to be the Messiah would be brutally murdered and then raised from the dead was completely off [...]

Spurgeon’s Advice in Preparing for Easter

preaching, quotes - 1 April 2010 - No Comments

From Lectures to my Students, advice that I pray all my brothers in ministry will hear with me as we prepare to preach this Sunday:
Of all I would wish to say this is the sum; my brethren, preach CHRIST, always and evermore. He is the whole gospel. His person, offices, and work must be our [...]

Rework: Start Making Something

Acts 29, church planting, quotes, reading - 30 March 2010 - No Comments

As promised last week, I’m going to keep working through a few of my favorite chapters in Rework – a great new book that takes a pretty down-to-earth look at startups. I’m reading through the lenses of my own context – specifically starting new churches.
The next chapter I want to highlight was only one page [...]

Great Church Promo Video – Check it

church planting, ministry, video - 25 March 2010 - 1 Comment

Every wondered what it would be like if a church did promotion without a lot of hype and focused more on the Gospel than selling their church? It would probably look a lot like this:

Grace Community Church is a church plant in the heart of San Antonio, TX that I’ve followed for awhile. They meet [...]

GO READ: The God of the Mundane

pastoral care, reading, spiritual life, theology - 25 March 2010 - 1 Comment

A friend of mine, Matt Redmond (not to be confused with Matt Redman, the worship leader), wrote a great post today that is worth the time to consider. Matt and I share a common love for the writings of Eugene Peterson, and Peterson’s fingerprints are all over this post.
Peterson is the first one (and really, [...]

Workaholism Doesn’t Make You A Hero

church planting, cool work, reading - 24 March 2010 - 1 Comment

Last week, I read through a new book called Rework by the guys who are behind 37Signals, a great software company that produces some really helpful applications. The book is a short, easy to read, and on-the-ground-practical look at what it takes to do a start-up that works.
Now, while starting a church and starting a [...]

GO READ: Crucifying the American Dream

links, spiritual life - 12 March 2010 - 2 Comments

My friend Jared Wilson has a fantastic post today that gives a lot of good food for thought over the weekend. Let me encourage you to really read this and consider it. Don’t dismiss it. Don’t wave it away as something for “those really spiritual people”. What if this is actually true for you and [...]

Excuse Me While I Geek Out

video - 11 March 2010 - 4 Comments

Ok, I know this dropped a couple days ago and I’m a little late in posting it – but oh. my. goodness.
I watched Tron as a kid with my dad, and while I wasn’t old enough to completely understand it all I knew it was pretty stinking awesome. In the youth room of my church [...]

Taking the Long View

church planting, ministry, quotes, reading - 10 March 2010 - 2 Comments

A few years ago I read  A Narrative of Suprising Conversions by Jonathan Edwards, and there is one particular paragraph that God used to shape and change my heart. In this paragraph, Edwards is talking about his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, who preceded Edwards as pastor of his church. Listen to how Edwards describes him:
He was eminent [...]

Unhappy Hipsters

fun stuff, links, social media - 8 March 2010 - 3 Comments

I’ve been sick since Thursday night with what was diagnosed yesterday as a sinus infection and Strep. My head isn’t super clear right now and I’m doing good to simply be upright and not in bed at this point. All the to say, I’ll be blogging more soon but want to update with two quick [...]

UPDATE: What I Actually Meant

Acts 29, church planting - 5 March 2010 - 83 Comments

So, two days ago I wrote a short blog post that ended up getting linked to, tweeted, and passed along – bringing about 40x the normal amount of readers to my blog. The post struck a nerve, it seems. But it was misunderstood by many, and because of that I need to clarify a [...]

Uncool People Need Jesus Too

Acts 29, church planting, ministry - 3 March 2010 - 103 Comments

UPDATE: This post was ill-advised on not written well. I’ve written a follow up to it that explains more of what I was trying to say – please go read it first and then read the original post.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE UPDATE FIRST.
_________
Through my work with the Acts 29 Network, I get the [...]

Just a Little Patience!

church planting, cool work, social media, video - 2 March 2010 - 3 Comments

If you don’t know who Gary Vaynerchuk is, let me introduce you: Gary is an entrepreneur, social media consultant, wine connoisseur (and salesman), and a big time NY Jets fan. His first book Crush It was a great read. Gary’s core message: find something you love, work hard, then work some more, and you can [...]

How is Your Lent going?

spiritual life - 1 March 2010 - 2 Comments

We are a few weeks into the Lent season now – how is it going?
If you’re like most folks, it become difficult to keep our focus and zeal during the duration of the season. Life creeps in. Work, school, family responsibilities – they all sneak in and steal our focus away. Let me encourage [...]

Back to Blogging Tomorrow

family - 28 February 2010 - No Comments

I’ve been out of town since Thursday – took a couple day vacation up to New York with my wife. We got in just as the big snow storm was hitting, which definitely made the trip a lot more interesting! It’s been a great trip with just the two of us, but we’ve definitely missed [...]

I’m Fat and I Don’t Want to Be

Uncategorized - 24 February 2010 - 14 Comments

I’m not a small guy. Far from it. You can use titles that make it sound nicer – “husky”, “stout” or even “thick”. But the bottom line is this – I’m overweight. To use the even uglier, but more accurate word: I’m obese. (My Wii Fit scale even tells me so…)
Back in 2002, I lost [...]

How A Baptist Came to Love Liturgical Prayer

spiritual life - 23 February 2010 - 3 Comments

Last week, I shared the beginnings of my story with prayer – and how the world of spontaneous, prayer-louder-prayer-harder-pray-more prayers left me empty.
In the midst of my struggle to pray, I was read Lauren Winner’s memoir called Girl Meets God. In the book, Winner describes her journey from being an observant, Orthodox Jew to becoming [...]

“Come, Be Encouraged”

preaching, quotes - 22 February 2010 - No Comments

I read this quote from my all-time favorite preacher, C.H. Spurgeon, this morning – and realized how much I needed to hear it. Again. Pastors out there, if you’re like me – there’s a good chance you need to hear it to. Be encouraged and keep doing the vital work God has called you to!
Come, [...]

Where Did All The Pastors Go?

church planting, ministry - 19 February 2010 - 12 Comments

I’ve spent entirely too much time over the past few years reading blogs.  Seriously – ungodly amounts of time that I’ve had to repent of.  One of the things I’ve found is that there is a pretty strong subculture of “Church Planter Blogosphere” – a group of guys who have all planted churches in the [...]

What Is Ash Wednesday?

spiritual life, theology - 17 February 2010 - 5 Comments

Ash Wednesday is the first day of the season of the church year called Lent. By the fourth century the Western church determined that the Lenten period of fasting and renewal should correspond to Christ’s forty-day fast (Matt. 4:2), and, by counting forty days back from Easter (excluding Sundays, which remain “feast” days in which [...]

Tuesday, Feb. 16 Link-A-Thon

cool work, links, ministry, social media - 16 February 2010 - 3 Comments

Here’s some interesting stuff going on in the circles of the internet I read. Have another great link? Share it in the comments!
Redefining Christianity – Brian McLaren recently released his latest book, A New Kind of Christianity. What many have feared for years has become pretty clear in this new book – what Brian is [...]