I still remember how exciting and terrifying it was 10 years ago when about 15 of us gathered at my house, Sunday, March 25, 2007 with a big white box van in my driveway and a load of sound equipment in my living room. The night before, I had stayed up till 2am working on my message, practicing …
Christmas Generosity 2016
Every year, LCC attempts to buck the trend of Christmas commercialization and materialism by asking people to intentionally give wealth away. It's a tradition we are embracing more and more each year. Our first year, we collected money for Matrix Pregnancy Resource Center (now called Matrix …
Essential Information for Newcomers to LCC
This week, Billy and Beth each wrote blog posts highlighting two aspects of our church vision. Beth wrote about our overarching mission to simply help people discover life in Christ. Billy wrote about our recent building campaign vision to build a spiritual home for the spiritually homeless. I …
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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 …
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My Statement to the Lafayette City Council on Gender Identity
Last night, the Lafayette City Council met to consider putting an amendment into the Lafayette Human Relations Ordinance. Some time ago, the city codified a "Human Relations Ordinance" to fight against discrimination in our town. It created a Human Relations Commission tasked with the job of …
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What Is Our Promised Land?
Kadesh Disappointment On Sunday, we covered one of the most important stories in the book of Numbers. It's also one of the most disappointing stories in the Bible. The people of Israel march from Sinai to the desert south of the promised land, to a region called Kadesh-Barnea. There, God gives …
The Water Commitment
Every January, we revisit the core values of the church by considering the four basic aspects of life in relationship with God. To do this, we have developed four metaphors that express these basic biblical principles, and we have integrated them into a document we call the Membership Covenant. …
The Fire Commitment
Every January, we revisit the core values of the church by considering the four basic aspects of life in relationship with God. To do this, we have developed four metaphors that express these basic biblical principles, and we have integrated them into a document we call the Membership Covenant. …
The Earth Commitment
Every January, we revisit the core values of the church by considering the four basic aspects of life in relationship with God. To do this, we have developed four metaphors that express these basic biblical principles, and we have integrated them into a document we call the Membership Covenant. …
The Air Commitment
Every January, we revisit the core values of the church by considering the four basic aspects of life in relationship with God. To do this, we have developed four metaphors that express these basic biblical principles, and we have integrated them into a document we call the Membership Covenant. …
Commitment is Coming
Every January, we revisit the core values of the church by considering the four basic aspects of life in relationship with God. To do this, we have developed four metaphors that express these basic biblical principles, and we have integrated them into a document we call the Membership Covenant. …
We Own A Building!
Homes Can Be Scary Back in October of 2005, Jen and I had become convinced that God was leading us to start a new church in Lafayette, so we drove down here from Chicago with our two little kids to visit some neighborhoods and to get ourselves a place to live. We weren't planning to move until …
2301 Concord: Closer to Closing
The past few months have been among the most exciting in the life of our church so far. We have been deep into the process of figuring out whether God would have us take advantage of the opportunity at 2301 Concord Road, and we are finally coming to the end of the journey. …
Is God Leading Us?
For the past few weeks, I have been asking the people in our church to give me feedback and to be praying for wisdom regarding the possibility of us purchasing the building at 2301 Concord. In many ways, it looks like the perfect opportunity for us at this time, but there are also two major …
Some Responses to Our Survey
With all the conversations going on about the recent decision of the Supreme Court and same-sex marriage, you might have forgotten that we are in the process of looking for a new location for LCC. Well, I haven't, and I've been wanting to talk about it in this forum for a couple of days now, but …
Should a Church Move Next to a Strip Club?
On Sunday, I announced to our congregation and published to our church website the news of an interesting opportunity for us. If you haven't had the chance to read that post, please head over there and read it now, and then come back here. The quick synopsis is that after a year of praying, we have …
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