What am I reading? Are you ready for a surprise? I’m reading poetry! I’m always on the lookout for new and fresh ways to reflect on the Easter season. One way I’m seeking the Lord this Easter is through reading poetry. May I recommend Malcolm Guite’s book The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a…
Hunting for discipleship in the Old Testament – part one Have you heard the story about the boy in the Sunday School kindergarten class? When the teacher held up a picture of a squirrel and asked the class what it was, the boy answered, “I think it’s a squirrel but I’m going to say Jesus!”…
It was like a scene from a Stephen King movie. Twelve men huddled together on a dark beach behind a leader. A few torches shed light onto a horrific scene. Running toward them was a howling, bleeding, naked man. “What do you want from me?” the man screamed at the leader. The leader, Jesus, calmly…
Disciplemaking is as simple as a walk I quickly saw the clutter of books and videos when I walked into Justin’s office. His office was taken over by this stack of resources. What was the subject matter? The piles of books and videos were about discipleship. Justin was searching for the holy grail of disciplemaking…
It’s not about exercise. It’s about disciplemaking. Christians in North America are discovering the beautiful simplicity of Jesus’ method of disciplemaking. We’re longing for something simple because we’re growing tired of over-stated promises of curriculums and programs. We want a disciplemaking process that is relational, simple, and do-able — something that everyday Christians can do…
Crowds and disciplemaking go together. Numbers rule the day. Politicians count the number of people at their rallies. Churches count attendance. We count and compare our Facebook or Twitter followers. Numbers and crowds measure success. I’ve always had a “thing” with crowds. Disciplemaking is a ministry of the small and the slow, a work hidden…
The Color of Compromise: The truth about the American church’s complicity in racism by Jemar Tisby. Want a book that keeps you up at night thinking? The Color of Compromise is one of those books. Why is it so provocative? Pastor and author John Piper has been quoted as saying, “We all have blind spots…
The church’s seasons, like Advent or Lent, have been mostly irrelevant or a mystery to me. My “liturgical” friends make a big deal out of Lent, Ephiphany, or Pentecost. In my baptist tradition, no one preached against the church seasons, they just weren’t mentioned. It’s not unusual to have an Advent sermon series but we…
The fact-checkers met Jesus at every turn. Fact-checkers are religious people whose goal in life is to ensure that we’re obeying God in precise and pure ways. They help us keep the “i”s dotted and the “t”s crossed. Fact-checkers are driven by obedience and doctrinal purity, good things to be motivated by. Unfortunately, they sometimes…
Stewards of Eden: What scripture says about the environment and why it matters by Sandra L. Richter Richter’s book will turn the most conservative among us into “tree-huggers.” Like most conservative evangelicals, the environment hasn’t been on my radar. I’ve associated the environmental movement with restrictive policies on the advance of business and development. Richter,…