“Peace be with you.” Christians all around the world repeat these words every week—but what would our lives look like if peace really was woven into every part of our lives? The book of James provides us with a clue: “The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace,” James writes, “by those who cultivate peace” […]
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Sermon: The King Who Died with an Open Hand
In 2007, a movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman wove a new phrase into the vocabulary of Western culture. This new phrase also happened to be the name of the movie: The Bucket List. A bucket list is a series of experiences that you want to have before you “kick the bucket.” Near the end […]
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Sermon: Learning to Live in Awe
“For this reason,” Paul declared in his letter to the Ephesians, “I fall to my knees before the Father” (3:14). When people fall to their knees in the Bible, we tend to assume that the primary purpose of their prostration is prayer—and that was indeed part of what Paul was expressing here. But that’s not […]
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Sermon: The Difficult Journey Toward Deep Diversity
“It is appalling,” Martin Luther King, Jr., once pointed out, “that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” One of the primary reasons that churches remain segregated today is because white Christians failed to acknowledge the full humanity of their African-American sisters and brothers many years ago. For many African […]
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Leadership: When Your Church Has Issues
It happens in dating, and it happens in friendships and marriage. You meet someone, and—for a while—this individual seems flawless. Sometimes it takes a few months, other times it only takes a few minutes—but, eventually, it happens. It becomes apparent that this person has issues. Chances are, they recognize the same truth about you. It […]
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Sermon: That Awkward Text About Noah that No One Wants to Preach
In every Sunday School lesson and Bible storybook about Noah that I recall from my childhood, the ark-builder’s story ended in triumph. In sermons, if they mentioned this text at all, it ended with a “curse of Ham.” Noah saves the animals and sees the sign of God’s covenant—and, with that, the account of Noah […]
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