Last weekend, we continued our series through James by considering the root causes of conflict. I don’t know anyone who is immune from relational conflict. Broken relationships affect all of us. James gives us the anatomy of quarrels and fights – our passions that are at war within us. These are selfish pleasures, desires that …
Last night (Ash Wednesday/Valentine’s Day…whichever way you want to identify it), several hundred Gracers across all generations gathered together to observe the beginning of Lent.
As we concluded our January focus on consuming God’s Word, I wanted to highlight the importance of living the Word. James 1:22-25 emphasizes this: 22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a …
Happy New Year! This past year I made the goal of reading 36 books (I only got to 35, and that with binge reading the week between Christmas and New Year’s!) I stepped it down from 2016’s 60-book count because I had a hard time recalling many of the books that I had read. I …
Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends and family. As you prepare to travel, cook, host, visit, etc. I hope that your weekend will be filled with more than just football on TV and polite dinner conversation (or hostile conversations). In an age where technology is causing us to lose the ability to engage meaningfully, I …
Dear Church, We woke up this morning to learn about the deadliest shooting in U.S. History. This time it was in Las Vegas. A man opened fire on unsuspecting concert-goers from the 32nd floor of his hotel. As I read about the tragedy, I couldn’t help but think, “not again.” I experienced a weird mixture of …
With the encouragement of a friend and in response to a fantastic workshop on reading for preaching (thanks to the Center for Excellence in Preaching), I accomplished my goal to read 60 books last year. Before you think I accomplished some super-human feat, the 60-book total consisted of everything from children’s books to multi-volume trilogy novels. Some books were …
As a church, we have been experiencing the Christmas story in our Face to Face series. We’ve looked at a variety of ways God meets us through the Incarnation. That Jesus came as a baby reminds us that God came to meet our brokenness, our shame, and even our fear. I’d like to highlight two …
We are continuing our Side By Side series through the book of Philippians. Paul gives us a way forward as we press on to know Christ: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead. As I preached on Phil 3 this past weekend, I didn’t have the time and space to talk about …
This past weekend, our church celebrated a MISSION weekend. That’s “Mission” as opposed to “missions”. What’s the difference?
