Glorious Mud

I made a point in a recent sermon  that sometimes we block ourselves from growing in our faith with good theology. I think some people thought it was a strange point and I’d like to explain why I think it is a point worth making. First, to make it clear, theology is not the problem. Having a sound theology is a good thing - it helps clarify our thinking about ourselves and about God. It gives us a framework for understanding who God is, what he has done, and how we take hold of his covenant promises. It gives us a scope of God’s awesome control and nature and our dignity and depravity. All good things. Sound theology is (to quote Paul) “holy and righteous and good,” but sometimes how we use it isn’t. Culturally, we have a very low tolerance for sorrow and negative feelings. We are like the character Joy in the movie Inside Out. We want to draw a little circle around our sad feelings and say, “This is your place, you stay in there. Don’t touch anything.” And the circle we draw i...

Last Sunday (March 26, 2017), I preached a message at Trailhead Church in Edwardsville, IL , called Sanctified Diversity, looking at Paul's rebuke of Peter for not "keeping in step with the truth of the gospel." The clear implication of this passage is that it's not enough to only know the truth as a follower of Jesus. You must also lean in and learn to live out its implications in the difficult spaces of life.  There are few areas that our culture needs us to lean in with gospel grace, humility, and empathy more than in the area of racial and cultural diversity. It's just not optional. We can be orthodox in our words and heretics with our lives, undermining the integrity of the message of the gospel because we are not walking in its power. To be true to the gospel, we need to do more than just believe its truths. We need to walk out their applications in our lives.  My sermon was called Sanctified Diversity . You can follow that link to listen to it on Tr...

Confession. We need it. And we hate it.  We hate to do it because it forces us to admit things about ourselves we don't want to admit. But we all have hidden things in our lives that sit in the dark and gnaw on our souls - things that scratch at locked doors of our conscience, aching to get out... things like weaknesses, shameful appetites, betrayals, besetting sins - they almost demand that we put them into words and share them. But to do so feels often like a form of death in itself. And this isn't a religious impulse. It's a human one. We all feel the need. All you have to do is look at the crazy popularity of a site like postsecret . I have to admit that I like postsecret. I find it intriguing and, at times, disturbing. I have sympathy for some confessions and repulsion at others. And there have been some wonderful stories that have emerged of people actually making real, personal, human connections with others through the site when someone recognizes their ...

Almost everyone I know has experienced post-regret, the feeling you get after you post something on social media and then wish you hadn't. I know a few people who haven't. Actually, I don't. Who hasn't jumped into the black hole of a Facebook argument or posted something personal in a moment of frustration only have the wrong people see it (and comment on it) or impulsively hit share on a witty-but-cutting meme or tweet? Social media is a great way to connect with others, but it is full of potential hazards and hassles. And, as a Christ-follower, this can be particularly dangerous, since what I say, post, repost, or share, reflects not just on me, but on my savior. So, how can I make wise social media decisions? In the hope of helping us all use our social media more responsibly and effectively, I thought through five questions that we should ask before we hit that "share" button: Is it true? As people of the Bible, this should be a no-brainer, but i...

I want to invite you to make a plan for reading the Bible, but first I want to tell you a story. After I graduated from high school, I moved from California to Iowa to attend a small Bible College.  I wasn't a believer, but I chose to go anyway because Dubuque, Iowa was as far as I could go away from home and still have my mom pay for it. What a crazy year - I went from beaches to corn fields and pigs, from the 80's punk-skater subculture to the 80's Christian subculture, from never opening a Bible to being immersed in intense theological study and discussions and even the study of Koine Greek.  I had no idea what I was getting into. I hated high school - and most things about my life in San Diego at that point - and I thought an escape was in order.  I had no plan to actually believe this stuff.  But while it wasn't part of my plan, I became a believer that year (thankfully, it was part of my Father's plan!).  It was a strange thing - the more...

This Sunday I challenged our people at Trailhead Church to memorize Titus 2:11-14 , our text for the four weeks of the Advent season.  For some, this may be the first time they have tried to memorize scripture, so I thought I would pass along a few thoughts to help out. First, memorization is all about repetition and familiarity.  Find creative ways to keep the verse in front of you throughout the day.  Write it on a 3x5 card and tape it to your bathroom mirror.  Make it the background of your computer.  Pull it up on your phone and review it when you have a little down time.  Try to recite the verses to yourself and see what comes easily and where it still gets fuzzy.  That way when you look back at the verses, you'll know where to focus attention. Second, to truly memorize something it has to move from your short term storage to your long term memory banks.  How do you make that happen?  As you get the verses down, put time between you...

This week I preached the second-to-last sermon in our Deep Rest series at Trailhead Church  called Rested Work .  The sermon series explores the nature of what the Bible calls Sabbath rest, and this message focuses on our need to have a good "theology of work" in order to be able to experience rest. The central point of the message is that we need to turn our work into worship.  This means that whatever our work is - a minimum wage job, being a student or stay-at-home mom, or laboring in a white or blue collar career - we need to learn how to see our labor as worship.  What we do may not have eternal value (or even much temporal value), but how we do it does - because if we turn our work into worship,  we glorify the God who wired us to be creatively productive - to be culture makers. So, in follow up to that sermon, here are a few pratical tips on how to prepare your heart to do this on a day-to-day basis. Pray to Give Thanks The first thing you ca...

Sandy Hook was an overwhelming display of evil.  It left us with sorrow, pain, and a lot of questions.  I plan to write some thoughts about how the Bible has helped me process the overwhelming amount of suffering in the world, but I realize that many of my friends have questions and are looking for resources to help them process all of this from a Christian perspective now. So, here are a few links to some short articles that can help you process all of this from a Christian perspective.  I hope these links may prove to be useful to you. Albert Mohler, Rachel Weeping for her Children - The Massacre in Connecticut John Piper, How Does Jesus Come to Newtown Russell Moore, School Shootings and Spiritual Warfare Joey Newton, Weeping with those who weep, a first-hand response from Newtown Justin Taylor, 10 Reasons Why God Allows Suffering

A friend of mine tweeted this last week: Jonathan McIntosh  ‏ @ JonMcIntosh What if - to prepare a pastor for the work of the ministry - you need more suffering than seminary? Jonathan's question is a good one.  What truly prepares a man to work in ministry vocationally?  That is a complex question - but one thing I know is true.  A degree isn't enough.  In fact, a degree may be a foolish investment of both time and money. Choosing to invest in a degree that is designed to lead to vocational ministry before you know whether you have the gifts, the calling, or the depth of character is just plain stupid.  Just because you had a life-changing experience on a missions trip doesn't mean you should go get a Youth Ministry Degree.  Just because you love to study the Bible and like to hear yourself preach doesn't mean you should go spend tens of thousands of dollars to get an M-Div.  Just because you love the idea of working in the church doesn't me...

Yesterday, I once again was privileged to preach at Trailhead Church . I preached from Paul's prayer in Ephesians 1.  Paul was asking God to open the eyes of our hearts so that we would know "what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints."  The central idea was this: God's glory is the most valuable thing in the universe and he has buried that glory in an unlikely field: the church. After the sermon, I had a good conversation with one of our leaders.  He loves the church and wants to serve it more, but finds it frustrating that his life is consumed with having to make money to make a living.  He wasn't saying he wanted to work for the church - more that he would one day love to have enough money that he could be self-sufficient and devote full time service to the church. So, I asked him what he would do if he were financially independent that right now could not do (in service to the church).  He thought for a moment and responded that he was...

Came across this quote today over at Luke Simmon's blog  - it is from Kevin DeYoung's new book, the Hole in Our Holiness.  Too good not to pass on. In more than a decade of pastoral ministry I’ve never met a Christian who was healthier, more mature, and more active in ministry by being apart from the church. But I have found the opposite to be invariably true. The weakest Christians are those least connected to the body. And the less involved you are, the more disconnected those following you will be. The man who attempts Christianity without the church shoots himself in the foot, shoots his children in the leg, and shoots his grandchildren in the heart. Something to think about - God's says the church is his inheritance, his treasure (Ephesians 1:19).  How do you feel about it?

It's time to announce the release of Trailhead Church's website 3.0!  At a year-and-a-half in to our church life, we are on our third website - and our web presence is progressively improving in quality and content. I am stoked - our site is attractive, easy to navigate, and packed with information about who we are, what events are happening, and how people can get involved.  Props to Kraig Hufstedler for taking the initiative to build us a new site and build a team to maintain it.  I liked his initiative so much, I rewarded him with a ton more work!  He freelances, by the way... so if your looking, I highly recommend his work! Trailhead Church meets in Edwardsville, IL  and we would love to see you if you want to visit!

Death. Burial. Resurrection. That is what we celebrated in our baptisms this weekend at Trailhead Church : the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He paid the price - we reap the benefit. So we celebrate. And that's the way God wants it - Jesus was our substitute. He died our death under our judgment. He was crushed under the weight of our guilt and shame. He was immersed in our death because of our sin. And then he rose again. The payment was complete and a new morning of forgiveness and life had dawned. And we celebrate. To be clear, we don't celebrate our obedience or good fortune. That's in there - but what we really celebrate is Jesus himself. We celebrate his love, his grace, his forgiveness, his initiative with us, his mercy, his work. We celebrate his performance for us, not our performance for him. We rest in the peace of God because Jesus made peace with God for us. We don't just celebrate what he has done - we celebrate him. And ...

I was asked to write a blog for the Acts 29 website to help promote the upcoming boot camp in Chicago.  By the way, it's on September 15 and 16, 2011, and you should consider going!  You can get info here .  Lauren and I will be there helping with leading, facilitating, and assessing and we would love to see you there.  I guarantee you will be challenged with a lot to think about. So, I wrote the blog - and I know the way these things go.  It may or may not actually get published over at Acts 29, but I thought I would share it here.  It was fun to take a little time and remind myself of God's blessings over the last 6 years! So, here it is: ........ God’s plan has a way of making perfect sense in hindsight – even if it is completely unpredictable on the front side of things. In 2005, I attended my first Acts 29 boot camp in Edwardsville, IL.   I had never been to Edwardsville.   I had only recently heard of Acts 29 .   I def...

Over the last two weeks at Trailhead Church , we have been studying Proverbs to see what it says about how we use our words.  We used Proverbs 18:21 as our starting point. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. (Proverbs 18:21 ESV) I broke the study into two weeks: Deadly Words and Words of Life .  When I studied for these lessons, I wrote out all the verses in Proverbs dealing with our speech and I ended up with four pages of verses.  That was way too much material to cover, even in two messages, so I am going to follow these messages up with a few additional thoughts over the next week or so. The first is this: You want to be wise?  Shut yo mouf, foo.  (Or, in the King's English, Discontinue your incessant discharge of discourse, you dope). The average american speaks a lot of words every day.  Many of them, like the previous sentence, are completely useless, or worse, are dangerous and harmful. ...

We live in a hurried and distracted world.  We are overstimulated and bored.  We are driven to do more, achieve more, schedule more, and yet feel more disconnected, more left out, and more guilty about what we can't be part of.  As a culture, we know how to work hard, play hard, and escape even harder.  But we don't know how to rest. As a result, most of us are running dangerously close to complete melt down.  We are frayed and coming undone.  I think Weezer said it best (well, maybe not the best... but it will work) in their song Undone (better known as the sweater song).  It's a silly little song - but look at the lyrics. If you want to destroy my sweater Hold this thread as I walk away Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked Lying on the floor, lying on the floor, I've come undone. How many of us are so frayed that if that one thread were pulled - we would be naked on the floor curled up in the fetal position.  So we spend our time tryi...

The book of Acts has 28 chapters - and it is the history of the birth and spread of the early church.  The book of Acts ends the only way it could - open-ended.  Acts starts telling us a story that is still going on today - it is the story of God calling lost and broken people to himself to heal them and restore them to hope.  It is the story of God building his church. Acts 29 exists to equip and advance the cause of church planting.  In order for Trailhead to become a member, I had to go through a series of steps (writing position papers, multiple conversations, and a formal interview of both Lauren and myself) in which my character, my calling, and my skill set were examined.  In addition, our church's theology (what we believe about God) and our core missiology (how we live out our faith with those outside the church) were tested to see if they were sound and in line with the Bible. This week, Trailhead formally became a member of the Acts 29 network...

We have a crisis of discontentment today.  We have more than we have ever had - but we are less content that we have ever been. So, here is the deal.  If you want to be content - you have to foster a healthy discontentment. Seriously.  You can't be content without it. A lot of people think of contentment as a passive state of simply being "OK" with your life.  That isn't contentment.  It is denial.  Or worse, it is despair - the loss of hope for something better. Contentment is not a passive acceptance of what is - it is the result of an active pursuit of what is better. We are discontent because have a hunger for something we don't have.  The problem isn't the hunger - the problem is that we try to feed that hunger with the wrong things.  We crave something - so we try to feed it with buying stuff, or with the distraction of entertainment, or with more and greater achievement.  And it doesn't work. You can't satisfy a desire for ...

This last Saturday, The Journey: Metro East (soon to be Trailhead Church) hosted our first Affordable Christmas at our space in Edwardsville, IL. Affordable Christmas was the brain child of Josh Wilson and the crew at Mission St. Louis .  They decided several years ago to try to empower a group of low income parents with a way to shop for their children's Christmas by giving them an event that offered new presents at drastically reduced prices.  This event has proven to be one of the most anticipated events put on by MStL.  So, this year, we jumped in with them (or, I should say they jumped in with us - they brought over a great crew to help us staff and run our event)!  We have been working over the last two years to build relationships with a group of families living at SIUE's family housing, and this even was a great way to empower them and continue to serve them with the love of Christ. It really was a blast.  We had fun.  The parents had fun....

I meet with a lot of young dudes.  Many of them show real leadership potential.  But more than anything else, one of the first things I look for is a deep and real gratitude to God.  I am convinced that one of the first signs that someone really "gets" the gospel (and by "gets," I simply mean "believe") is a deep sense of thankfulness. In fact, probably the most accurate prayer someone could utter after hearing the gospel is not, "Lord, please forgive me" but "Thank you." Why?  Because the gospel is the message that Jesus has won for us peace with God.  It's a done deal.  The payment is complete.  When Jesus came as our High Priest and offered himself as the substitutionary sacrificial lamb, he fully paid our sin-debt to God and completely satisfied God's anger toward our sin.  He took the cup of God's wrath and drank it to the dregs.  So, when he rose from the grave, that was proof that the payment was absolutely comple...