When I was in seminary, I realized I needed glasses. My eyesight wasn’t terrible; in fact, after I started wearing glasses, my vision improved slightly—much to the delight of my optometrist. But each year, I return to the eye doctor expecting that my vision needs to be corrected again. As much as we hate to […]
Read More »On Sunday, August 2, I shared the five goals of our 2020 vision. On August 26, I’ll present the full details of our proposal. We’ll be throwing around a lot of terms and concepts that night, and I want to define a few of the words we’ll be using in our proposal. Assessment- an online […]
Read More »We just returned from a week without screens. Our family traveled to a YMCA camp in Estes Park, Colorado without phones, kindles, ipads, televisions, and music. We disconnected social media, email, news and trusted that life would go on without us. We left emergency numbers with those who could find us, and we had the […]
Read More »Everyone has a model of the way a church should work. As Peter Senge writes, mental models are deeply held images of life that shape the way we think, believe, and behave. Often we are not even aware of the effects they have on our behavior, but these models are expressed in our language, actions, […]
Read More »In my previous three posts, we’ve been reflecting on Jesus’ reign in the Gospel of Mark. As he takes control, he the world changes and so do we. We respond with courageous faith, and we also uncover barriers to that faith in our lives. Because of Jesus’ great mercy and love in our lives, things […]
Read More »We just returned from a great weekend in Sarasota watching Parker swim in the Florida Age Group Championships. Swimming, like many other sports, has its own little world of customs, expectations, and rules. If you want to swim, you do what the officials and coaches say. Otherwise, you’re disqualified. If you follow the rules, you […]
Read More »In my last post, we showed that Jesus’ resurrection affects life today. We respond to him with courageous faith and see evidence of it in your lives and in those around you. According to Mark, here’s what courageous faith looks like. Group action. Just as a few bystanders saw a paralytic responding to Jesus, a […]
Read More »The reigning, risen Jesus invites you to have courageous faith. Throughout the summer, we’ve been studying the components in the Gospel of Mark. During challenging times, we recognize how Jesus is alive and well. Death is losing its grip on us, and Jesus is Lord. He makes it possible for us to face these days […]
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The last time I walked door-to-door in Jesus’ name, I was on a mission trip to Bardstown, Kentucky. We spread the word about our youth group-led VBS. Last Saturday night, 18 of us from FBC and over 100 folks from our community walked the Providence Heights Neighborhood off Levy street. We responded to a request […]
Read More »Summer is a great time for me to catch up on history. I’m intrigued by the era when our nation was founded: 1630-1800. These years are also the formative ones for Baptists in America. In my last post, I refreshed your memory about some of the persecution that Baptists endured because of our views about […]
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