March 28, 2023
Being with God
I love when my kids tell me about their day. They are 4 and 8 years old, so they’re eager and excited to invite me into their little worlds. When I’m able to be undistracted and present with them, I…
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February 28, 2023
Finding Our Humanity Through Lent
As I write this I’m suffering from a head cold. I hate being sick. I feel my mind and my body are failing me even though I know it’s an immune response for which I should be grateful. I just…
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December 15, 2022
What a Year!
This morning, I read from Henri Nouwen’s book You Are the Beloved. One of the key statements that caught my attention is this: “We can easily lose sight of our joys and speak of our sorrows as the only reality…
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November 22, 2022
Finding Jesus in the Waiting
PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS Certainly, Christmas is worth preparing for. Alongside Good Friday and Easter, Christmas is the most important holiday for the faith of the Christian. There is no gospel without the Incarnation. However, it is increasingly hard to appreciate…
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November 18, 2022
Advent Resources for 2022
In the early days of Advent, we drive out to the Beck family farm to cut down a Christmas tree. Our only rule is it must be shorter than “Mom” so it will fit in our house. This rule is…
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November 3, 2022
Enjoying Jesus and Serving Jesus
Every good journey begins with a fresh awareness. An awakening perhaps. This article is written for those in ministry whose enjoyment of Jesus is missing in the current season. It is for those who deeply desire to ENJOY JESUS and…
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October 26, 2022
Engage this Fall with Missional Intentionality
The Fall season and its holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving, offer us many opportunities to live as a "beautiful resistance" in our city. The following are suggestions for engaging the Fall season with both communal and missional intentionality. We recognize that…
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October 18, 2022
Restoring Shalom
It is an understatement to say we encounter free-floating anxiety pretty much everywhere these days—at work and school, in our organizations, in politics, and in our homes and families. We can sense our muscles tightening, our jaws clenching, and our…
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October 11, 2022
Soul Care as Mission
I have a few friends that I meet with regularly that are not (currently) believers in Jesus. We grab coffee and talk about life, the world, and God. When we meet, I ask them about what’s going on in their…
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October 4, 2022
A Gospel-Centered Gospel
This is adapted from Ben Connelly's newest book Reading the Bible, Missing the Gospel, ©2022 Moody Publishers. Get your copy here or wherever you buy books.I grew up in a religious culture. I knew a lot about Jesus. I was…
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June 22, 2022
Equipping Disciples for Transformation
When you look at the equipping ministry of Jesus, and then consider common equipping practices today, it is clear that many of us have gaps in our approach. So much of our training merely informs people, leading them to gain…
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June 6, 2022
A Call to Fight for the Joy of Unity
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It…
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May 16, 2022
A Pathway for Discipleship
You’ve heard it said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” The same can be said of our disciple-making strategies. Jesus made it clear that our mission as His disciples is to make disciples of all nations, baptizing…
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April 26, 2022
Bringing the Gospel to Our Lips
If you and others around you are going to grow in gospel fluency, you need consistent immersion in a gospel-speaking community. This needs to be much more than a weekly gathering of the church where the gospel is preached…
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April 20, 2022
Devotion and Vocation
I started teaching full-time in October. Prior to this, I had primarily been either a student or a stay-at-home mom, which meant I was consistently able to dedicate a good chunk of time to “being with Jesus'' in Word and…
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April 12, 2022
Holy Saturday
Luke’s account of Good Friday reveals: “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.…
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March 29, 2022
Pastor, Prioritize the “Mini-Retreat”
Craving a “Date” with Jesus Pastoral ministry comes with some of the greatest joys and deepest sorrows. I remember a particularly draining season, filled with all kinds of discouragements. I was doubting my own effectiveness at discipling others, feeling the…
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March 22, 2022
Neighborhood Prayer Challenge
When we think about the magnitude of seeing every life saturated with the gospel of Jesus Christ and how many people live in our cities, it can become overwhelming. For some, that overwhelming feeling can immobilize us. Moving from big…
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March 8, 2022
Longing for More of Jesus
Busyness has a way of stealing our joy and distracting us from the important, lasting things of life. Over the years, I have found this to be increasingly true during big holidays like Easter. Amidst the lists of to-dos, wrangling…
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March 1, 2022
Culture Makers
Since the beginning of creation, humanity has been creating and cultivating—bringing into existence new ideas and new life, while simultaneously establishing a culture where ideas and life either flourish or flail. As Andy Crouch states in his book Culture Making,…
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February 16, 2022
Holistic Discipleship
Discipleship is a holistic enterprise. Any discipleship process that leads people to become more like Jesus will address the head, heart, and hands—what people know, what people feel and believe, and what people do. Whenever the people under our leadership…
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February 15, 2022
Sitting Shiva
It’s been a little over a year since we lost our beloved daughter Erin to cancer. My wife and I will never get over it nor do we want to get over it. For some reason, this decision seems to…
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February 1, 2022
Marked by One-ness
Have you ever tried making a sandwich with one hand? We often take for granted that most everyday tasks are a whole lot easier with two. Our body is an amazing picture of what it looks like to need…
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January 25, 2022
Abundant Fruitfulness
Over the last few years I’ve been increasingly convinced that forming resilient disciples in our culture is going to take a lot more than good Sunday services and healthy small groups. As I survey the landscape of American Christianity, there’s…
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January 18, 2022
Hope for a New Year
Every year It’s A Wonderful Life plays in the background as my husband and I set out gifts on Christmas Eve. It’s a story I need amidst the materialism and mayhem. I need it because of the tug of war…
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January 11, 2022
The Voice of the Spirit
The following is Day 1 of 5 in a new devotional called Spirit Lead. This devotional helps create a moment of pause and reflection with God while you consider your life within the church, listen to the Spirit, and ask:…
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December 20, 2021
Advent and the Coming of Christ
I’m not sure why, but every time I’ve heard the word Advent this season I’ve thought of the song “Jesus Is Coming Soon,” a song I’ve never particularly liked. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cringe, or cry the first…
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December 15, 2021
Celebrating God’s Work in 2021
God has been at work in and through all of us this past year. It would take volumes to describe all that He has done. Our team is so encouraged by the way we see God at work in and…
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December 14, 2021
The Missional Heart of Advent
The holiday season is one of the busiest times of year for most of us. We buy gifts, decorate the house, visit loved ones, enjoy traditions, and plan big get-togethers. Although 30% of all charitable giving happens in December and…
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November 30, 2021
Trusting the Process
My husband has on occasion accused me of thinking I have a superpower: the power to identify what’s wrong in someone else’s life and the right to tell her what she should do to fix it. But we all know…
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November 22, 2021
Missional Community Living
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” - King Solomon, Ecclesiastes 3:1 This past weekend my two boys and I road-tripped deep into Appalachia, passing through North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky. Our…
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November 9, 2021
Vocation and Discipleship
As a lay elder who works a full-time job in the corporate world, I have long been intrigued by the role of vocation in the Christian life. Christians throughout church history have worked in all manner of vocations. In the…
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November 4, 2021
Advent Resources for 2021
Waiting. Waiting etches itself into the experience of every son and daughter of God through the pains of bondage, plague, drought, and storm. Sarah and Abraham waited for Isaac. Joseph waited for his brothers and God’s grace to make evil…
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October 19, 2021
Listening Well
I recently observed a conversation a few Christians were having with a man who has yet to come to faith in Jesus. It was amazing to me, and saddening, to watch the Christians missing the point of this man’s…
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October 12, 2021
Reading Your Bible is Not the Goal. God Is.
Relationship or Discipline (or both)? How is your relationship with Christ these days? This question is one that is quite familiar in Christian circles. Knowing that our passion for God has a tendency to ebb and flow, often we disciple…
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October 5, 2021
The Things We Carry
When I was heading to Memphis for the recent Gospel Fluency of the Heart training, I happened to throw Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried in my bag. I didn’t realize its relevance to the subject at hand—the gospel and…
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