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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...
Letters To Nobody
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 Uncommon Man
I was watching a commercial the other day. One of those car insurance ones. You know the type. Husband and wife standing in the driveway. She is sharp, decisive, already has the app pulled up and the quote locked in. He is standing there looking confused. Maybe scratching his head. Maybe saying something slightly dumb...
Letters To Nobody
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....
The Writing Life
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...
Faith Flow
My grandmother was not an easy woman to watch decline. She had been sharp her whole life. Quick with a Scripture, quicker with an opinion, and completely uninterested in being handled carefully just because she was old. She lived alone longer than anyone thought she should and she did it on purpose. Independence was not...
Letters To Nobody
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...
There is a line that used to be obvious. Children are off limits. Whatever adults choose to do among themselves – whatever content they consume, whatever lifestyle they live, whatever identity they claim – the children are not the audience. They are not the market. They are not the experiment. They are not the canvas....
Letters To Nobody
I remember when a disagreement could end with both people still standing. Not because someone won. Because both people had actually said what they meant and heard what the other person meant and arrived somewhere that felt more complete than where they started. Not always agreement. Sometimes just understanding. The recognition that two people could...
The Writing Life
A sermon requires you to already be in the room. You have to show up. You have to be open to receiving what is being delivered. You have to have enough relationship with the source that you will sit still long enough to hear it. For a lot of people — especially people who have...
The Uncommon Man
There was a season in my life where I felt like I owed everybody a reason. Why I believed what I believed. Why I led the way I led. Why I was not more flexible, more open, more willing to meet people in the middle on things God already settled. I was exhausted before noon...