…biblical Christianity without conservative idolatry…
Someone recently drew my attention to a series of videos on Amazon Prime going by the title, "The Days of Noah." I hate to draw attention to videos that are filled with misinformation, but I fear that someone else might come across them and so, I'm posting this here in case that someone is …
Continue Reading about No, Sunday Worship is Not the Mark of the Beast
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 of …
edit: I have removed the chapters from my blog for the moment because I'm submitting the book to publishers and agents at the moment. 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 …
Today in the New York Times, David Brooks published an opinion piece about the Evangelicals who are trying to save evangelicalism from itself. Evangelical is a word that I used to fully embrace for myself because I thought it was a word that described a commitment to the gospel, a commitment to the …
Photo by James Eades on Unsplash In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day yesterday, I thought I would take a look at one of his most important works. As a white man, my knowledge of the life and work of Dr. King is almost entirely limited to his "I Have a Dream" speech, and I thought that in …
Continue Reading about Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail
In my message last Sunday, I encouraged everyone to build their lives on the foundation of understanding God's Word. Specifically, I gave this as our take-home principle: I’ll build my life on a JESUS-CENTERED understanding of GOD’S WORD. At the core of this statement are two important …
Continue Reading about Christ-Centered Interpretation of the Bible
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 you (anymore) …
Continue Reading about An Open Letter to My Christian Friends About COVID
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. …
Continue Reading about Real Talk: A Series of Letters to My Friends
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 …
The Scary Part In the first post (Part 1) in this little mini-series, I walked through the first 16 verses of Matthew 21 to show how the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem and cleansing the Temple was all about how much Jesus hates it when insiders keep outsiders out. In the second post (Part 2), …
Remember the Lesson Yesterday, I posted an article analyzing the first 16 verses of Matthew 21. Putting the Triumphal Entry and Cleansing of the Temple stories into their Old Testament context revealed that Jesus was stepping fully into his role as the King of the Outsiders. The outer court …
Sunday's Message was one of the longest messages I have ever taught. I had to go through many Old Testament passages because Matthew had quoted them, and I wanted you all to see Matthew's quotations with the context that I'm sure Matthew knew, but we might not remember. Looking at all those passages …
All About Relaunches Throughout the life of our church, we have gone through many different "launch" moments. We had the launch of our first "preview" services in January of 2007. We had the launch of our "public" services in March of 2007. We had the launch of a new location when we …
With the departure of Joe and Megan Hill, the lifecycle of Lafayette Community Church has come full circle, and if we are being honest, we are a church that needs to basically begin again all over from scratch—with the one exception that we already own a building. But before, I get into what …
On March 16, at 7pm, we are going to have our first ever membership vote! Here is the clip of me talking about it during our Vision Dinner (in the video, I say the vote will happen on March 9, but the actual vote will be March 16): Helpful Links The official resolution we will be voting …
Latest Indiana County Map and COVID Statistics Note: Since publishing this post, the Indiana statistics have gotten MUCH better. However, our county is still considered "red." I and the other leaders of the church have been doing a lot of thinking regarding when and how we can return to …
