Posts under ‘Church Culture’

As you know (from Part I), I can struggle to feel responsible for “fixing myself” as it relates to my sin. I spent most of Part II trying to convince you and me that God has a much better path to righteousness that involves a lot less exasperation and a lot more dependence. Jesus rebuked the [...]

I confess that “accountability” has been a bit of a taboo word for me until recently. Months ago,  if you caught me on the right day, you could tell me that you were were going to have an accountability time with your small group, and I would have had an internal response that sounded something [...]

Most of the things I’m going to write about here I learned from my extraordinary fiancé, Jessie. These are things I’ve just begun to understand in the last two years, and most of that learning was the direct result of her boldly speaking into my life. So if you have questions about this, she’s probably [...]

I want to ask you a question: Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus? Now, if that question gets you wondering if I spend my weekends as a middle-aged white man on a street corner handing out tracts from the 90′s, I’m sorry to disappoint you. But I’m just a regular guy. The reason [...]

When I started hanging out with Charismatics, something that struck me very quickly about them that looked quite different from many of the believers I grew up around was how much patience and effort they showed to listen to the Holy Spirit in everyday conversations, prayer, or counseling times. I think the foundational belief of [...]

As many of you know, I’ve been spending a lot of my recent months with believers from many different churches who are significantly more “Charismatic” than those I grew up around. I strongly believe God brought me into this company to stretch my understanding and experience of his character in news ways that would take [...]

For those of you who don’t memorize all of my blog posts, let me remind you that StrengthsFinder calls me a futurist. That means I’m always thinking about what’s next. I think God knew about my futurist tendencies when he decided to begin calling me toward relationship with him. Not many people know this, but my [...]

Chuck Colson and friends recently issued a document known as the Manhattan Declaration. The group hopes to affirm a biblical worldview in politics, and present it to Congress as a means of unifying Christians under common convictions that they claim are bipartisan, or rather non-partisan. Although the affirmations in the document are fairly consistent with the [...]

There seems to be a developing conversation around church relevance. I don’t say that because people are just starting to become interested in church relevance (that’s been happening since Luther and the printing press), but because some people are really starting to challenge its modern conception. At the Cultivate Conference, I repeatedly heard the same question: “How can your [...]

In my last post about this, I shared some troubling trends and statistics regarding the gender ratio imbalance in the Church in America today. There are reasons to be alarmed, but I don’t think this is a losing battle. I see tremendous opportunity in our current predicament, and want to share an idea or two on [...]