I realize I’ll get in trouble for writing this. I hope you can love me even when God puts it on my heart to advocate for people whose existence has been delegitimized with the label of “terrorism.” And I hope you understand that my advocacy does not connote moral approval of very evil things that have been done and are being done. I used to be a youth pastor to kids who society had written off on account of their... Read more
Today at the basilica Monday mass like many weeks, our recessional hymn was “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.” I really love this hymn and have been wanting to adapt it into a contemporary format. It affirms the basic goodness of God. Not just goodness in the sense that “God’s in charge so whatever He does is something we’re supposed to call good,” but the kind and gentle goodness Jesus exudes in saying “Come to me you who are weary.”... Read more
I’m just going to share 1 Kings 22 without comment. It speaks for itself. Share it if God speaks to you through it. (more…) Read more
One of the most cogent things that Barack Obama said during his 2008 presidential campaigns was that he would sit down with America’s enemies since it’s bad strategy to “punish” them by not talking with them. He was widely ridiculed by people whose heroes Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon accomplished their greatest foreign policy achievements with the USSR and China precisely through their willingness to treat America’s enemies with dignity, which happened in a different time before American politics became... Read more
It’s hard to articulate a legitimate Christian response to the tragedy in Gaza right now. My inclination is to take the side of the underdog and go against all of my fellow evangelicals whose commitment to Israel’s absolute infallibility helps make Israel unaccountable for the $3 billion of our tax dollars that they get each year. But there’s no way to justify the rockets that the Gazans are firing at Israel from a moral or even a strategic perspective. And... Read more
Below are pictures of five kids that God cares about. (more…) Read more
My heart is sick at what is happening in Gaza right now. I can’t think clearly enough to write with the sensitivity that I want to have in saying anything about that conflict so I’m going to minimize what I say for now, but I need you to see three things so you can understand why I’m fasting today and hopefully have your eyes opened to a tremendous blasphemy that is being done to the name of God and His... Read more
In the church planter training today, I’ve been learning why the word “leadership” makes me grimace. It’s because of my leadership style. The word “leadership” has a specific autocratic connotation to me that I define myself against. We took a leadership style assessment today called the DISC inventory, which is based on the premise that there are four poles for understanding leadership style: [D]ominant, [I]nfluential, [S]teady, and [C]onscientious. A “D” is an authoritarian who takes charge; an “I” is a... Read more
I’m spending this week at the Virginia conference’s New Church Leadership Institute training for church planters. Don’t worry, Burke UMC (if you were worried). I’m not planning to do it for a couple of years if it turns out that it’s my calling. One of our projects for the first day has been to come up with a vision statement for our future church plant. So I wrote one and came up with a description for each component of it.... Read more
Jesus’ parable of the weeds in Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 is a tough passage to preach on unless you’re a Calvinist because basically it says that some people will always be weeds who have been planted by the devil that God leaves alone until the end of time when He throws them all into hell. Now a lot of preachers cheat when they get stuck with this passage by trying to make the weeds into bad “attitudes” or “feelings” in a... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In