
The Valley of Transition: 7 Lessons from 6 Months of Radical Change
It’s been six months since I preached my final message as Pastor of Grace Hills Church, which Angie and I founded together in the summer of 2011. We spent a decade of our lives gathering with people who were passionate about embracing the brokenness of humanity...
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...
15 Reasons People Are Disillusioned with the American Evangelical Church
The Vinedresser often prunes the vine so that the dead branches are cleared to make way for fresh, new growth. I believe that may be happening within American evangelicalism. I’m not a prophet, so time will tell, but I do believe that the events of 2020 and 2021 (so...
Breaking Free from the Bondage of Anger
Six years ago, I stood before our church as we started a new message series called Healing, and introduced the sermon saying, “Hi. My name is Brandon. I’m a Christian who struggles with anger.” For the first fifteen years of my ministry, I learned to...
Moving Beyond Shame and Regret, Step 4: Receive God’s Forgiveness
In case you missed it: Step 1: Recognize God’s Goodness Step 2: Release Your Heart Step 3: Repent of Sinful Choices If you’re a child of God, the only prerequisite to being forgiven of sin is your honest confession. The Bible is clear about that. If we confess...
The Most Rewarding Hard Work You’ll Ever Do
Hard work is virtuous. And when it comes to hard work, we seem to go to two extremes in our culture… We look for a way out of it – Like, how do I get rich, quickly, with very little training, no learning curve, and in as few hours as possible? We let it...
The Best Personality Type for Ministry Leaders
I’m an introvert, and I’m a pastor. It’s a tough combination to pull off, especially when we tend to celebrate certain types of personalities over others in the world of ministry leadership. As church planters, we went through a couple of different...
7 Realities of Knowing and Doing God’s Will
It’s possible to know and to do God’s will. Consistently. A couple of decades ago, the church I was leading walked through the Experiencing God study, and it changed my life. I began to understand that God was more than a subject to be studied but rather a...