In a world marked by coddling and canceling, let’s call up the next generation. The gospel is true. God is real. The church that reaches the next generation will not be riddled with insecurity but will hold out, with confidence and humility, a serious faith.   Not long ago, I sat across from a pastor of a... Continue Reading

Injustice can consume us; it can corrode us, our character, our trust, our very soul. It can dominate our thinking. It can sabotage our ability to trust God. And so in his kindness God offers more than binding up our hurt. He offers to take that awful pain, that deep injustice, and use it for... Continue Reading

The abandonment of the freedom to engage in political speech against those currently in power leaves one of two options, neither of them conducive to national stability and flourishing. Those not currently in power will either become politically powerless forever or they will seek that political power non-peacefully. There is no alternative.   As I... Continue Reading

God is not simply a big person, sharing our imperfections with us or exalting the supposed virtue of dependence, as if God is somehow glorified in His need. Rather, His divine life is marked by a completely different type of being—so much so, that it is more proper to call him the source, ground, or... Continue Reading

Wolves are inevitable as the gospel advances. Jesus had Judas, the believers in Ephesus had their own fierce wolves emerge after Paul was gone (Acts 20:29). Wise believers will seek to prepare for this common danger to the church—and act when the wolves are exposed.   Some of the most painful lessons of ministry are... Continue Reading

So much of the teachings of the urban church flatter the sensibilities of the people in the pews rather than fundamentally challenging them about the way they are living their lives…The pedimental nature of third way rhetoric is very effective, and it’s easy to see why it appeals to the striver class people who populate... Continue Reading

No matter the teaching, no matter the offense—if the Bible says it, we ought to believe it. Period. We should never apologize for what the Bible says.    Society is saturated with apologizers. Every which way we turn, someone is apologizing for something because it offended someone. It’s a vicious cycle. And Christians are, in... Continue Reading

If we are honest, we know that sometimes our greatest pain comes from dealing with the consequences of unfaithfulness and sin—whether our own or that of someone close to us. And when we find ourselves there—and we will—Lamentations is our handbook.   As we wrap up our four-week series, Redeeming Trauma, we need to pay... Continue Reading

We should think through tertiary and secondary matters and think carefully about what the scriptures say and how our approach to them will impact our churches. We may not write people out of the corpus if they land differently to us, but where we land may have implications that matter far more than we tend... Continue Reading

With their deep understanding of the brutal realities of my life and the potential dangers that lurk, my pastors do not “motivate” me; they shepherd me. Modeling “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deuteronomy 8:3,  Matthew 4:4). They preach the whole counsel of... Continue Reading