Today is a great day. Darkness and light. Yin and yang. Salt and pepper. Regular and decaf. In the words of Morpheus, "fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony". As I’ve mentioned before, today is the birthday of two men who have highly influenced the culture of my life, good or [...]
While we were out guitar shopping/dreaming a few days ago, my 7-year-old spotted a red sports car out of the truck window as it whizzed by and said, “Dad, red cars are the fast ones, y’know?” “Really…?” I responded. “Yep. The red ones are. Cuz they’re red.” Flashback: I said the same thing when I [...]
The annual Breathe Deep conference in Kemah was great this year. At least for Heather and I. We got to hang out and talk guitars and worship with the sparky David Gentiles. I admit, I’m still jealous over his redwood MacPherson 3.5 acoustic guitar. And he’s a great guy as well. Lance Crowell did [...]
iMonk has a great post titled "The Jesus-shaped Question: Are Christians Like Jesus?". After reading and reflecting on Philippians 3:7-8, he has some great thoughts which may be offensive to some. Something that leaped out at me this morning is this: Christians are conservatives and liberals. Christians are culture warriors and advocates of family [...]
I’ve cried for a week now. Last August, DaNetta Hagerman, a dear friend ,youthworker, and mother, passed away in a fatal car accident. Last Thursday morning, her husband, Larry, was involved in an accident at work and suffered fatal head wounds. After he was Care Flighted to the ER and rushed into emergency neurosurgery all [...]
I’ve been kicking this post around in my head for a while. The hard thing is that blogs have inherently short posts, and this is not something I can express in 200 words or less. Nevertheless… As I posted not too long ago, a very dear ministry friend of mine emerged from rehab a [...]
Remember, ministry (and life) will kill you. It’s supposed to. It’s designed to reveal God’s strength through your weakness. His success in the midst of your failure. His greatness among your feebleness. And mine. The story goes that Mother Teresa was approached by a young man who wanted to know God’s will for his life. [...]
I recently met up with a long-time ministry friend who just got out of rehab. Let’s call him Wayne. I first met Wayne while I was serving at my first church. He was one of ‘those guys’: the ones with an amazing journey of finding Jesus. His life-story included being raised by a cocaine-using [...]
In continuing my evolving thoughts in Philippians 3, it’s brought me to this thought: There is something mysterious and other-worldy about conversion, whether you experience it as a moment-in-time experience or a series-of-steps-on-a-journey. I grew up hearing the gospel as a child and heard it for years..over and over and over. Until one day…BAM! [...]
If you know me well, you know I get really passionate about a few things. At the height of those things is a ‘moral gospel’. You know, a certain, arbitrary set of rules that determine your degree of holiness. The problem with that kind of gospel is that you always have someone who attains it…and [...]