Following Jesus, according to Jesus, involves dying to self:  discovering places in your soul where self has to be conquered, and then conquering it.  You put ‘you’ on the cross.  You deny your self, and yes, I intended ‘your’ and ‘self’ to be two separate words.  Denying self isn’t merely keeping things from yourself, but learning to say “no” to your self’s desires and drives – saying no to the s...  Read More

If people are drawn to you, eventually they’ll become a part of your circle, and that circle should include Christian friends and people from your church.  Becoming part of a Christian circle doesn’t make one a Christian.  But God’s drawing people to Himself necessarily involves the influence of and connection with others.  Others must lead the horse to the water.  When a soul decides to follow Ch...  Read More

The first step of reaching out to unchurched people is not connecting them to Christ or the church but connecting them to you.  That may sound heretical to our older crowd, but I’m guessing it’s just common sense to those forty and under.We want invite people to follow Christ, but there are obstacles to our being heard that weren’t quite as prominent even fifty years ago.  Christian leaders being ...  Read More

Do you stand eagerly at your door hoping a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon will come by and share his religious ideas with you?  It is more likely that if you see them on your block you do your best to make it look like no one’s home!  Do you think it’s any different with preachy evangelicals?People don’t want to connect to religious fanatics.  They want to connect with people who share their interest...  Read More

Evangelism is about calling people to follow Christ, and following Christ is about learning a new way to live.  Knowing biblical truth isn’t an end in itself.  We are learning to escape corrosive lies and live a life of obedience to truth.We are not merely learning religious truths for the sake of knowing ideas.  The ideas have practical ramifications, and it is the ramifications, the ends of the ...  Read More

What are we trying to build?  What kind of church do we want to be?I started with evangelism and noted that, at least as Jesus and the apostles did it, it was not focused on one’s eternal destiny but on following Christ. Calling people to follow Jesus involves more than throwing a few “magic” words at them.  We must interact within the context of their life situation, presenting Jesus’ claims and ...  Read More

The first Sunday in October we’ll be going to two services, and I’d like to share a few thoughts about making that adjustment.First, this is an experiment.  The tentative plan is to run two services until the end of May 2024 and then return to a single service format for the summer.  This will give us an opportunity to assess what works and what doesn’t – and whether we need to return to two servi...  Read More

Every now and then a trend favoring “family worship” arises and wends its way through evangelical circles.  “Family worship” is when the children are kept in the adult worship service with the parents.  The belief is that family worshipping as a unit and children seeing parents modeling worship is better than a separate age-appropriate ministry for children. That trend blew through in the early 19...  Read More

Most people don’t like change.  We do what we can to keep our settings comfortable and familiar, even if the world is changing around us.And the world around us inevitably changes.  It changes as information changes, and because of our technology, information changes (and is disseminated) at a much quicker pace than ever before.If you don’t have mechanisms for change, you don’t stay in the same pl...  Read More

The first cost of following Christ is the possible loss of social connection.  The second cost is even more personal and more difficult.“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9.23)“So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14.33)“Denying self” means I must say no to me.  The natur...  Read More

Jesus told people who wanted to follow Him to count the cost of doing so.  The first cost Jesus mentioned was potential dissolution of familial bonds.  Your family may hate or disown you (Matthew 10.21-22,34-37; Luke 14.26).    Family – home – is our natural foundation.  Family creates for us a sense of ‘normal’, the familiar, that with which we are comfortable.  ‘Family’ knows us – has always kno...  Read More

The apostles wanted to persuade people, not merely to escape hell or seek eternity in heaven, but to follow Jesus now, in this life, and on into eternity.You don’t “convert” for merely a moment.  You follow – and keep following.Following Jesus means you are willing to start – and that you actually start.And you start with the intention of finishing.  You commit at the outset to run the entire cour...  Read More