The Litmus Test

Let me begin this post by asking how you would fill in the blank in the following question: Jesus’ Church is all about ________ What would you put in this blank?  When you think about Jesus’ Church, what’s the most important thing?  What’s the key distinctive that sums up what Jesus’ Church should be focusing on?  That’s what I’m getting at with this question.   This is a question that’s been answered numerous ways in just my lifetime.  In the 1970’s and ‘80s when I was growing up in the Church, the answer seem to be “reaching the lost.”  The Church existed to tell those who don’t know Jesus about him and to invite them to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  This was an idea that Billy Graham made famous and it became the hallmark of a lot of church communities.   Because my church community believed Jesus’ Church was all about reaching the lost, we focused on methods of evangelism, sharing our faith, world missions, and we talked A LOT about the End Times.  This is the study of

We serve a good and beautiful God who loves us.   He’s the father who comes running when his spoiled, unfaithful brat of a son returns home.  He’s the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to search for the one lost sheep.  He’s the rabbi who chooses to eat with tax collectors and sinners, and who honors the prostitute who anoints him with oil.  His love crosses all boundaries and pierces every heart.   Our life with God is the daily surrender to this astounding love.  We risk vulnerability before the Creator of the Universe, to open our hearts as best we can to God's pure and holy influence.  We show God how we really feel, and God shows us ourselves.  In this process, this good and beautiful God changes us slowly over time into someone more like Jesus.  It’s a gracious and humbling dance with our glorious God.   When I share this, I inevitably get pushback: “God’s love is also punitive and correcting. It includes tough love. Is it loving to allow someone to continue in sin without

When Jesus established his Church, he wanted it to be an extraordinary community.   He wanted his Church to be a place where when people would come and see it and say, “Wow! What an extraordinary community!  I want to be a part of this!”  Jesus wants his Church to show people what life in his kingdom looks like, a place where you can find authentic spiritual community that’s rooted and established in God’s love.   Take a look at what the Apostle Paul says to the church in Colossians 3:11-17: Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Ch

I talk a lot about God’s magnificent, breathtaking, far-reaching, unconditional love.   I tend to push people’s boundaries of thinking about his love, because when it comes to God’s love, I believe most of us are thinking too small.  God likes you.  God loves you.  God loves loving you.  When I’m declaring God’s expansive love, I often hear the tough love mandate in response: “God’s love isn’t just warm fuzzies. It includes tough love. Is it loving to allow someone to continue in sin without saying anything? Aren’t we supposed to correct people if they’re sinning?” “Doesn't God’s love say we are mandated to act if a fellow follower of Jesus’ is living in willful and rebellious sin?” These responses are so common, that I decided to write a blog post about it.  I had so much to say that it turned in three posts.  In part 1 , I took a look at the source of the “Tough Love Mandate”: Matthew 18:15-17 .  If you haven’t read it, I’d recommend you go back and read it first.  The understand

  Several months ago, I was out with some friends at a pub when the conversation shifted to a discussion of someone from my old congregation who was “living in sin.”   For this post, the particular sin doesn’t matter, and, for the sake of argument, we’ll assume the assessment that this person was “living in sin” is valid (meaning a reasonable argument could be made for this person’s behavior to be classified as sin).   I found myself having a lot of resistance to the proposal my friend across the table was making.  They were advocating for a sin intervention (a “sintervention?”), saying that we needed to step in, name the sin, and call this person to repentance.  I was saying that I wasn’t willing to call out this person’s sin in this way, because I felt like I didn’t have enough relationship with them to speak to it. I was confident the person knew the church considered what they were doing as “living in sin”, and that it would be unnecessarily harmful to confront them in the way my f

Back in March 2023, I passed my Project Management Professional exam and received my certification.   In these posts, I want to share some of my experience before it starts to fade.  In accordance with the PMI code of ethics (and the little waiver I agreed to before taking the test) I won’t be disclosing any proprietary details.  I already shared my experience of taking the exam and covered the requirements.   With this post, I want to share how I studied and the tools I used.    Tools I ended up using five tools to study: The PMI books ANKI flash card study app PMI.org’s Study Buddy / Study Hall Andrew Ramdayal’s courses (PMP Exam Prep and his practice tests on Udemy) PM PrepCast  The PMI Books Here’s a tip: If you pay for a  PMI.org membership, you get ALL of the PMI publications FOR FREE .  Well, not free, per se - they're included in your membership fee.  That’s actually worth the price of joining by itself, not to mention the reduced exam fee.   Here are the books I read, s

When I was first drawing near to Jesus again - after living ten years away from the Church - I was skeptical, sarcastic, and cynical.   My family and I had ended up at the church where I would eventually serve as Executive Pastor.  But in the beginning, I sat each week in the congregation with my arms folded, listening as a skeptic, not as an open-minded explorer.  I criticized the lead pastor’s sermons every Sunday until my wife told me to quit complaining or quit going with her.  I chose to stop complaining. I felt like I was at a threshold where I could go deeper into this church community, or I could leave and continue my journey away from Jesus. But I couldn’t just stay standing in the doorway complaining.  I saw the joy people had around me, but I was wounded from my years of growing up in the church community of my youth, and I was jaded by my experiences in the desert of self-imposed exile from God.  I needed to know that this church community was a safe place for me to continu