This is a continuation from the post about the word “sabbath” and sabbatical and is an extraction from an email we sent out earlier in the year. A pastors need for sabbatical is something that few people truly understand, which is why a second Hebrew word comes in really handy

The Bible is an incredibly diverse book with different literary genres, authors, perspectives, but there are common threads that hold it all together.  One of those threads that we see from the very beginning is the Hebrew word and concept of “Sabbath.” It is a word that means “stop,” “rest,”

Have you ever been angry, depressed, or anxious where the same negative or hurtful message keeps playing over and over in your head?  Of course you have.  We all experience the haunting of the negative message stuck on repeat in our minds. It can be that hurtful thing that someone

This past Sunday, I preached the first lesson in a Relationship series on Assertiveness. The part of the Bible the teaching came from was Matthew 18:15-20 where Jesus is teaching his followers how to get along with each other and navigate relationships through difficult moments. Right in the middle of

Orthodox priest, professor, and author, Alexander Schmemann, has a wonderful book called “For the Life of the World.”  I would encourage anyone to read it, especially any Western Christian who is less familiar with the Eastern half of the family of Christianity. There is so much to share from this

The 2017 Christmas Season – more accurately called “Advent” – has been really interesting in our household. My wife, Carrie, is 39.5 weeks pregnant with a due date on Christmas Day.  To add to the drama, our youngest was born two weeks early and Carrie has been having tricky contractions

Found on page 438 of historian and Professor Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens:  A Brief History of Humankind (underlines mine, italics his): So our medieval ancestors were happy because they found meaning to life in collective delusions about the afterlife? Yes.  As long as nobody punctured their fantasies, why shouldn’t they? 

I’m sure to some people this sounds ridiculously untrue, but if you are willing, stick with me for a moment. Imagine you are sitting at a table and the person across from you slides two portraits in front of you.  You don’t recognize the people in either of the pictures. 

[This is adapted from part of a sermon I preached a while back, but I think it bears repeating.] I can only assume that there are people sitting here today who don’t believe any of this, about the Great Epic – beginning, middle or end – or people who are

This is a massively important topic for our world today and for how individuals and churches live out the Christian life. You may not know what these two are, but if you are a Christian in a western society, they shape how you understand your faith, the Christian life, and