Recent Blog Posts
I Don’t Know Yet, But I Can Tell You What I Think
At the ripe old age of 19, I was married and serving as the Senior Pastor of a small church in rural Arkansas. And I knew it all. It wasn't until years later that I realized not only how little I actually knew, but how freeing and empowering it is to acknowledge my...
What John 3:16 Says About a Wonderful World Worth Saving
At our wedding, we played Louis Armstrong’s famous song, What a Wonderful World. That song would later become pretty problematic for me because of some poorly formed theology, some of which you may be familiar with. The world is bad and evil, as are all the people...
Sustaining the Weary with a Word
This isn’t a private message, but it is a deeply personal one. This morning, I opened my Bible to Isaiah 50:4-9, one of the passages assigned for this coming weekend in The Revised Common Lectionary. And God met me there. The first few lines of the passage are: The...
Aren’t You Curious? How Curiosity Cures Us
Aren’t you curious? About what makes people tick? About where all the dinosaurs went? About what life would be like growing up in rural Mongolia? About what the fall of this year is going to bring us? We were all taught that “curiosity killed the cat,” mainly by...
If You’re Renting, Try to Buy a Home – Shoot Your Shot!
All around me here in Northwest Arkansas, apartment complexes keep popping up like popcorn. Which makes me wonder… 1.) How can they all keep filling up? And I know the answer is that about a thousand people move into the I-49 corridor each month and we’re a rapidly...
What if I’m Not Ready to Be Healed?
Healing comes with a heavy cost. We can release our grip on resentment and rebellion, receive help, and experience renewal in every part of our lives. But... If we do that - if we embrace the kind of healing available to everybody who is broken and in pain - we'll...
Announcement: I’m Now a Licensed Real Estate Agent
As we transitioned out of leadership at Grace Hills, I surveyed the things I've been interested in and, for a while now, real estate has been at the top of the list. I took the course, passed the test, and have joined the team at Collier & Associates. You can...
It’s Time – We’re Stepping Away from Grace Hills Church
At this time ten years ago, Angie and I were just beginning to dream and plan for the planting of Grace Hills Church. We had walked through some brokenness and had found within our staff and small group communities at Saddleback Church a great deal of healing. It was...
15 Reasons People Are Disillusioned with the American Evangelical Church
It’s been a year of pain. We need a reformation — not so much of doctrine but of emphasis, and the emphasis needs to be placed squarely on our calling to love God and all people. Yes, we need solutions. I want to talk more about the solutions than the problems, but we’re in such denial that it’s hard to get there.