Pastor, Church Communications Guy, Church Website Designer & Blogger
On the radio this morning were two different stories about major moral issues in American culture. On the abortion front was the story of North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple signing into law two of the strictest anti-abortion bills in the country: one that bans abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected; and …
Keep Reading
I'm a messed up human being. I don't mean that I'm particularly deranged - just that I was born broken and have reached the plateau of adulthood carrying some flaws with me. The biggest flaw? I believe lies... sometimes.
Here's a law of life that can't be avoided or broken... The way I think determines what …
Keep Reading
I had the rare privilege of reading the lyrics to Not Holding Back when Neil was writing them, and then heard the song during it's time in production. I can tell you that Neil agonized over this song, making sure its theology was well rooted in Scripture and that its message was needed by today's …
Keep Reading
I'm writing this article to a generation that might never have heard the old song, Old Time Religion (so I included a clip from an old movie for you). I grew up in an old-fashioned church. We had an old building, built in 1833, and an old cemetery with civil war era headstones. We sang old songs on old …
Keep Reading
Jesus wasn't always clear. He told parables not for the purpose of simplifying and illustrating truths to make them more understandable, but to present the mysteries of the kingdom to the few who would catch the underlying meanings. Jesus is the greatest philosopher the world has ever known. He could go deep, …
Keep Reading
For some time now, I've been serving as a Pastor to Saddleback Church's correspondence team, a group of dedicated staff and volunteers who answer over 100,000 emails per year about a range of subjects. Not a week goes by that I don't see an email (or twenty) asking for Pastor Rick's response to what someone …
Keep Reading
If you only had a few weeks left in which to preach the Word to your beloved congregation, what would you say? What messages would you want to preach? That's the question I've wrestled with all week. And at the end of all the searching, brainstorming, and praying to God for a Word from Him, I've finally landed …
Keep Reading
Here's a link to the whole series.
Last week I wrote about the first of several relationship principles for life and that was It's Not About Me. Today I'm moving into Ephesians 4 for the next several principles for relationships.
We should speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15) …
Keep Reading
I was deeply moved by today's reading from J. Sidlow Baxter's devotional, Awake My Heart. He speaks of the mysteries of life, what W. A. Criswell used to call "the imponderables of God." Baxter mentioned birth, life, personality, human experience, Satan, eternity, etc. All of these are unexplainable. We can …
Keep Reading
I'm madly in love with Angie Cox and my two kids. And I'm loved and forgiven by an infinitely gracious God! I'm a Pastor, Church Planter, Editor, and Community Facilitator.
