A couple years ago a friend of mine who was a part of my ministry in Dallas before I became a pastor reached out via drunk text. He had moved on in life and had clearly stopped following Jesus and now was back to where he once was. He was antagonistic and satirical. He was over trying to pretend to fit into the Christian bubble and wanted me to know how silly my faith was....

"So what did you get?" This is the question that is about to be asked about 50 times among my children in a couple weeks. I think this question has been asked probably 1000s of times over the years of students returning from Christmas break. There was always a strategy involved in asking and answering this question. If we are honest, we didn't really care what the other p...

2016 In 2016, I didn't talk about the election during election season. We had tackled a lot of controversial topics in the summer before and we were in the midst of a series called Margin where we were calling people to put margin in their lives timewise and moneywise. However, everyone else was thinking about the election. I got a text from a man about my age asking me i...

Election Day The entire American world is starting to focus on one day. The first Tuesday in November looms in the future as half of the American public will celebrate as if they won a lottery, and another half will mourn as if their dog died. There will be a need for healing after a vigorous election season of name calling, intelligence questioning, character demonizing,...

Welcome to the Family If you were to take a moment and think about your life, wouldn't you agree that most of your drama comes from family? As we approach the holiday season we are about to be really excited, really stressed, and perhaps really let down. I think I remember being in college, really excited to go home for Thanksgiving to see the family, which was...well...m...

The Word Worship Worship is a word our culture tends to use improperly or to look at with disgust. For example it's okay to worship your idol as long as what you mean by worshiping, is that you love them a lot, you do whatever they say, you defend their honor even when they say and do awful things, and you pay them money to listen to their words of wisdom and memorize the...

My Old Neighbor I once had a neighbor who scoffed at the idea of Christianity, especially the evangelical kind. She came over with her kids to carve pumpkins one October before I was to preach the next morning on giving and I told her I was a little nervous about it, because people get defensive when preachers talk about giving. But then she said, "Do you believe in God?"...

Punch In a time long past, when kids clustered in cafeterias without fear, held teachers hands, and when washing your hands was seen as a good thing, but not life or death, my son got in trouble at lunch. Austin was playing a boys game called "Punch." Essentially Austin and his friends would punch each other and see how big of a whack each other could take without crying....

Last Dance I have been recently watching the Last Dance on Netflix. I know. I'm late to the party. But it has been awesome. It's like going back to my childhood fantasizing about one day being Michael Jordan. The interesting thing about the Bulls was when Phil Jackson took over the team, they went from an offense focused on Michael to an offense focused on a team that wou...

Favorites One of my favorite stories in the Bible is from Matthew 20. The authentic realness of selfishness, self-preservation, and comfort come out of the disciples and those following Jesus. I always love this more because it reminds me of the spiritual maturity of people in church plants. People who are really excited about making this thing big and have dreams and vis...