Jeff Mikels | …helping people find life in Christ.

Chapter 5: Scripture’s Call to Moral Action

This is the longest chapter in the book. Over 12,300 words. Take your time with it! Scripture’s Moral Truths In Chapter 1, I described the overall dilemma facing the church as this: How much of the “not yet” is it the responsibility of the church to advance in our real world today? And then I […]

Chapter 4: A Confession

A Confession I ended the previous chapter with four questions Christians need to answer as we consider our responsibility to be agents of the gospel in the world today. However, before I can address any of those questions directly, it’s important for me to openly address the biases from which I am coming. All of […]

Chapter 3: Gospel Integration

Gospel Integration Some traditions refer to the transformative work of the gospel as “progressive sanctification,” but the application of that concept is almost exclusively individual and “spiritual.” For those traditions, the gospel begins a spiritual work in the heart of a person to make that person increasingly less likely to sin, less likely to think […]

Chapter 2: A Re-United Gospel

Our Different Gospels Not long ago, I was in a meeting with a variety of pastors from a variety of traditions and we were talking about something scholars call “Liberation Theology.” Before long, we found ourselves in the midst of a heated debate over the true meaning of the word gospel. For the unfamiliar, gospel […]

Chapter 1: The Dilemma of the Church

The Dilemma of the Church Incongruity From the earliest days of Jesus’ ministry with them, the disciples faced a difficult dilemma. Borne largely out of the incongruity between what they thought the Messiah was supposed to do and what Jesus was actually doing, they constantly and repeatedly were faced with this one question: To what […]

Introduction

Before getting into the main content of my book, I want to take some time to share an introduction of sorts, a brief description of the journey I have taken over the past 16 years or so. Introduction In 2006, when Jennifer and I moved to Lafayette to start a church, we had a number […]

The “Good Morning Church” Book

For a number of years now, I have been on a spiritual and emotional journey of learning what I was never taught about racism by building personal relationships with African American pastors in my town and about “liberalism” by listening to people tell me what they think, why they think it, and what they’ve been […]

Next Steps for the Church in America

The real problem in all of this, as I see it, is that pastors and ministry leaders are just as guilty of idolatry and ignorance as the people they lead. Someone has to sound the alarm, someone needs to start helping people wake up, someone needs to identify and tear down the idols, someone needs to bring them out of their ignorance. I wish it were someone else…

An Open Letter to My Christian Friends About COVID

Dear friend, I know we share deeply divided opinions on all things COVID, but I want you to know that I’ve been trying really hard to see things from your perspective. I’ve been working to learn all I can about how you see the world, and I think I do understand you. I don’t blame […]

Real Talk: A Series of Letters to My Friends

Over the past two (really six) years, I have seen among my Christian friends, church members and family members an unhealthy, illogical, and hypocritical allegiance to unbiblical and un-Christlike matters. Both as a pastor and friend, I have tried at times to address these unbiblical allegiances. However, as I have done so, many of my […]

Does God Turn His Face Away?

One of the most misunderstood parts of the crucifixion story shows up at the very end of Matthew’s account: From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why […]

Please, Church, Reject Trump (Transcript)

Today, I posted a video to my YouTube Channel imploring Christians to stand in opposition to Trump even if you choose to vote for him as the “lesser of two evils.” Here is the full transcript of my video. Good Morning Church! In today’s video, I’m calling on Christians to give up on Donald Trump. […]

Why I Voted for Trump and Why I Won’t Do it Again

I’m posting this on my personal blog. The viewpoint I share here is not necessarily the viewpoint of the church I serve as pastor nor is it a topic of my messages on Sunday mornings. Perhaps you like the Trump presidency. Perhaps you hate it. Your opinion matters, and the comment section below is open […]

On the Textual Reliability of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35

Before I talk about the issues with 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, I want to give a brief bit of information on the overall reliability of the text of the Bible. One of the fundamental truths about the text of the Bible is that we don’t have a 100% complete copy of the original text. However, a […]

Is it Discrimination to Discriminate against Discriminators?

My church office received an email today that called me out for what was printed in the local newspaper reporting on my involvement in the City Council meeting last Monday. A woman named Kathy wrote this: Dear Pastor Mikels, Reading the newspaper Tuesday morning, I felt quite sad to read about your objections to our community protecting […]