I never thought I would be defending Pastor Greg Laurie but some of you are getting completely out of hand and somebody needs to say something. Let me start with the basic facts that a lot of people spreading this story have either not read or are choosing to ignore. Greg Laurie was not charged...
The Writing Life
What Comes Next
I want to tell you where the Black Water series is going. Not everything. Some of it has to stay in the manuscript until you read it. But enough so you understand that what I built in the first book was a foundation and what comes next is the structure that goes on top of...
Letters To Nobody
What A Church Without Fear Looks Like
I want to end this series with something that is not a complaint. Everything I have written in this second half has named something wrong. Fear as a control mechanism. Mistranslation as doctrine. The silencing of honest questions. The weaponization of scripture against the people it was supposed to free. Those things are real and...
Letters To Nobody
What I Have Seen In The Church
I want to tell you something that happened in a conversation I had with a minister. I am not going to name him. Not to protect him — to stay focused on the pattern rather than the person, because the pattern is what matters and the pattern is not unique to him. We were discussing...
The Writing Life
What I Know Now That I Did Not Know In 2018
In December of 2018 I pushed a publish button and thought the hard part was over. I had written the book. I had formatted it. I had a cover. I had a title that felt right. I had done the thing that most people who say they want to write a book never actually do...
Letters To Nobody
The Congregation That Learned To Be Silent
It does not happen all at once. Nobody announces that questions are no longer welcome. Nobody posts a sign that says — leave your honest doubts at the door. It happens gradually. Through a series of small corrections. A subtle shaming here. A side comment there. An eyebrow from the pulpit when someone pushes back....
Letters To Nobody
Why A Controlling Church Cannot Afford For You To Ask Questions
The question is the thing they are most afraid of. Not because the question is dangerous. Because the answer might be. If the congregation starts asking real questions the people who depend on the congregation not asking real questions have a problem. So the questions have to be managed. Discouraged. Framed as signs of weak...
The Writing Life
The Outlier
Michael Crichton does not fit the pattern. Every other author I have mentioned in this series writes in the Christian supernatural lane. Peretti. LaHaye and Jenkins. Dekker. They share a worldview, a set of spiritual assumptions, a belief in the reality of what most of the literary world treats as metaphor at best. Crichton is...
Letters To Nobody
How Mistranslation Became Doctrine
Words matter. Especially in translation. When you take a text written in Hebrew or Greek and move it into English something happens in the transition. Sometimes it is clean. The meaning carries across without significant loss. But sometimes — and this is where things get complicated — the translator makes a choice. A theological choice....
Letters To Nobody
The Gospel They Are Preaching Is Not The One In The Bible
I want to be careful here. I want to be precise. I am not talking about the church broadly. I am not making a sweeping indictment of every pastor, every congregation, every tradition. I am talking about something specific that I have seen enough times in enough places that I can no longer call it...