Tension was created in me this past week. At first, it sucked. But as I mulled and prayed…I sensed Christ leading me somewhere new. We were at the beach. Holly and the kids, my two sons and my daughter, and the kind of ordinary that is so full it almost hurts. Sand and sunscreen and someone always needing something and the sound of the water doing what the water always does, indifferent to the smallness of the moment and the largeness of what I was feeling inside it. And some

The beginning of a 7 part series that is my vision statement for my church and the future of the church.

There is a hard truth that we need to discuss. The word “church” has been used to cover so much ground. So many buildings, brands, movements, institutions, scandals, revivals, and slow declines. “Church” has become almost semantically empty. When I say “the church,” I am aware that you may be picturing something you’ve been hurt by, something you’ve left, something you’re still in but barely, something you love and are watching die. I am picturing all of those things too. Wh

Somewhere around the end of the first century (possibly earlier, possibly overlapping with the later New Testament documents) someone wrote a short document for a Christian community that needed to know how to function. It covers baptism, fasting, prayer, the Eucharist, how to welcome traveling teachers, how to discern a true prophet from a false one, how to elect local leaders, and how to live together in a way that actually looks like the Kingdom. It is called the Didache (

Let me say upfront that I am not doing the easy version of this argument. That’s a little too disingenuous for my taste. The easy version goes: Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire, the church got comfortable, and everything went downhill from there. It is satisfying, for sure. But it is also too simple, and the fathers who lived through it and after it were more complicated than that reading allows. Athanasius spent much of his life being exiled by empero

There is a argument you will hear in certain Reformed and conservative evangelical circles that goes something like this: “the miraculous gifts of the Spirit: tongues, prophecy, healing, the whole charismatic portfolio, were given to authenticate the apostles and establish the early church, and once the canon of Scripture was complete, they were withdrawn. God, having finished his point, moved on to a more orderly arrangement.” It is a tidy argument. It is also, historically