A Playground Parable

May 10, 2025

6 Min Read

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Once there was a young boy named Jimmy who was frequently put down and pushed around by a classmate named Max. Max was a popular kid. Super cool. Everybody seemed to like him—except for those who somehow got on his bad side. Day after day, Jimmy tried to just put up with the bullying. He’d tell himself, “It’s no big deal.” But one day it became a big deal. Max seriously crossed the line, hurting Jimmy so badly that he reported it. The Assistant Principal, Mr. Thompson, called Max into his office, along with Max’s best friend, Carl, who was in a different class and hadn’t seen the incidents. After their meeting, Mr. Thompson decided that Jimmy’s story didn’t hold up. Max and his friend both claimed that Jimmy was just overreacting and making things up. They even blamed Jimmy as the real problem, saying he was so hard to get along with. The letter Mr. Thompson sent home to Jimmy’s folks said that “it does not seem like Jimmy’s accusations are accurate.”

I told this little parable to my 6th-grade daughter one morning as we walked to school. I ended by asking her, “What do you think of that?”

She replied with one word: “Poop.” (Not edited—that’s literally how she talks. I’m welcoming her innocence as long as it lasts!)

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Well, the Assistant Principal should have interviewed more kids from the class. Those who really knew what was going on. Who had seen stuff. That wasn’t fair!”

Simple enough for a 12-year-old to understand.

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An Apologetic Church

April 5, 2025

5 Min Read

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No, I’m not talking about apologetics, that formal defense or justification of a theory or religious doctrine. In general, my take is that Christian apologetics is largely a waste of time for two reasons.

One, it’s really just arguing. Trying to prove that I’m right and you’re wrong. Because the quickest path to the winners podium is to paint you as a loser. This does no favors to the good news of Jesus. I’ve never met anyone who was argued into faith. But maybe I’m hanging out with the wrong people.

Two, by using the word apologetic so often in this sense (defensively arguing), we lose the power of the other meaning: regretfully acknowledging an offense or failure. I’ve heard the word apologetic used far more in the church to describe defensive argument than I have to describe regretful sorrow. Heck, you can even get your PhD in defensive argument in order to defend the Christian faith, but I’m unaware of any such degree in saying “I’m sorry.”

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Desolate or Daring?

March 26, 2025

3 Min Read

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The following is an article I wrote or our church’s monthly newsletter. It is a condensed version of my most recent sermon by the same name. While originated as a word for our local congregation, perhaps it will speak to others as well—particularly if your church, like ours is struggling, desperately in need of revitalization and change.

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Before setting sail in 1912, the Titanic’s crew received multiple iceberg warnings from other ships in the area. Despite these messages, the ship maintained its high speed, and the captain did not alter course—and we all know the tragic consequences of ignoring the timely and wise warnings.

In a similar way, Jesus lamented over Jerusalem because they refused to listen:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate.”

(Luke 13:34-35a)

They refused to change course when destruction was on the horizon. They were headed towards an iceberg, about to shipwreck themselves, but they refused to listen and instead kept plowing full steam ahead. This grieved Jesus.

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Walking Out of the Wilderness Alive

March 18, 2025

4 Min Read

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Driven by a desire for adventure, freedom, and a rejection of societal norms, Chris McCandless graduated college, gave away his savings, abandoned his possessions, and set off on a journey across the U.S. Ultimately his solo journey led him to live off the land deep in the Alaskan wilderness. While the exact details of his death have been speculated and argued about for decades, what is clear is that he eventually died of starvation after consuming toxic wild plants that slowly poisoned and paralyzed him, rendering him unable to hunt or forage.

If McCandless had been able to define the danger, he would have walked out of the Alaskan wilderness alive.

Over the past ten years or so, the phrase “spiritual abuse” has come more into the common vernacular. It has become a more well-known topic, but that doesn’t mean that we’re actually talking about it. Or that we even know what we’re talking about when we do.

And that includes me. I’ve still got a lot to learn.

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Compassionate Change

March 15, 2025

2 Min Read

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Change is hard. We are creatures of habit. We survive on predictability. Even for those of us, like me, who profess to have a high value for change, it’s still uncomfortable.

Early in our marriage, my wife would frequently come home to find the furniture in some room rearranged. Why? I was bored. Rearranging was was fun. The result may not have even been better, but I was entertained. What I learned (finally!) was that inviting my wife into the process was more important that what the final layout of the room. Love has the strongest fung shui.

The challenge for people like me, for whom change is a kind of sport, is to be kind when enacting changes that affect others. Compassionate change.

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Liking the Things We Like the Way We Like Them

March 12, 2025

5 Min Read

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Let’s be honest: We all like the things we like the way we like them. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous. To double-down on our preferences is domineering.

Liking the things we like the way we like them is not wrong. Our desires are not the enemy. In fact, desires are an oft-neglected way in which God leads us. He created us to have desires, and can guide us using them if we will bring them to him rather than either repressing them or thoughtlessly giving into them.

The heart wants what the heart wants. And that’s ok. Until it’s not. When our desires cause us to clench our fists—to control practices and people and outcomes—things can get unhealthy real quick. If, however, we can name our desires and yet hold our hands open—a surrender out of trust in God and respect for other people—then we are teeing up for a good time.

In my experience doing church together involves the near-constant friction of desires and expectations. Lots of sparks. Lots of discomfort. Which causes some to give up on the endeavor altogether. No judgment there. My favorite congregation, TBH, is the congregation that gathers in the Most Holy First and Bestest Church of Me, Myself, and I. The bummer for that congregation, of course, is that Jesus didn’t just call me to be his disciple, he called you, too.

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How Lent Can Help Your Organization Become More Healthy

March 8, 2025

7 Min Read

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Confession is Communal

This past week, on Ash Wednesday, our morning Bible study just happened to center us on this verse from John’s first letter:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

—1 John 1:9

While completely unplanned, this verse served as a timely introduction to Lent, the 40 days in which Christians prepare for Easter by engaging in the spiritual practices of fasting and repentance—which, whether we use the word or not, entails confession. Much of our discussion of 1 John 1:9 centered on each of us acknowledge our own sins and then confessing them to God. Great conversation!

I often think it’s helpful to take some words out of a strictly religious context in order to better understand them within a religious context. So let’s momentarily get out of our minds “confessing our sins to God,” as in a private time of prayer. Let’s also get out of our minds any images of confessing to a priest—whether that practice falls within your experience or tradition or not. Removed from any formal religious language or setting, what then does “confession” mean?

I suggest this simple definition: public admission of wrongdoing.

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Then Hope Happens

March 4, 2025

3 Min Read

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One thing is certain when it comes to any dire situation, whether in church revitalization or anything else in life: We humans thrive on hope.

Hope that things will get better. Hope that things won’t get worse. Hope that things will change. Hope that things will stay the same. Hope that this is not the beginning of the end. Hope for fresh starts.

There’s something about the energy in hope that keeps us going even when we feel like curling up on the couch with a bag of Doritos, or phoning it in and going through the motions, or running for the hills to find something that doesn’t feel quite so demanding or perilous.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
—Proverbs 13:12

Hopelessness is an illness. To keep on hoping time and again only to find yourself repeatedly disappointed feels like an illness. Like influenza of the soul.

The good news, however, is that the opposite is true: Seeing hopes become reality is like sitting underneath a shady fruit tree, enjoying its shade in the heat of the day and eating to your heart’s content.

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Speaking the Truth in Love

February 27, 2025

3 Min Read

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Recently on Facebook I asked a question: “What’s one key measure by which you would consider an organization ‘healthy’?”

There were a number of awesome suggestions. So good! I’m still chewing on some of them. I highly recommend heading over there and reading them. Then use them as a rubric for your own context. If you hold those side by side with an organization you’re involved with, what do you notice? Feel free to chime in on FB if you haven’t already!

One response connected with some of my own conclusions that I’ve been coming to. This certain friend responded with one word: Love.

Which dovetails with my answer to my own question: One measure of a health organization is the value and practice of speaking the truth in love.

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A Formula for Revitalization

February 25, 2025

3 Min Read

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As I’ve begun learning all I can about church revitalization, and as I’ve jumped right into the thick of that challenging work, this formula keeps coming to mind:

PRESERVATION + INNOVATION = REVITALIZATION

New life comes by us courageously engaging with two questions. These can be intimidating. They can be hard for those who have been invested for a long time, but they can also be tough for newer members as well. Yet if we all engage with honesty, vulnerability, and faith, I believe there is hope for the future of our congregation.

Here are the two questions:

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