Julie and I were away this weekend, enjoying a trip that all the pastors at Good Shepherd have received this summer, courtesy of what we call our Staff-Parish Relations Team.But back at the church, we showed this piece as a demonstration of the ways God stretches us...

Have you noticed how everyone is sorry for their sin . . . after they get caught? The repentance gear seems to kick in once the light exposes the dark places of people's lives.Jimmy Swaggart's tears, Mark Sanford's press conference, and Ted Haggard's apology all come...

I was so proud of Angela Hynds, Chris Macedo, and John Pavlovitz as they led into yesterday's sermon with a haunting version of DC Talk's "What If I Stumble?" Enjoy:It was an ideal segue into the first message of unChristian -- a talk which confessed that we 21st...

This Sunday launches LoveDare, a new series based on the book of the same name. This series will address relationships, romance, and, yes, marriage. Check it out:Why this series at this time? Because we're serious about addressing the marriage crisis in our community....

Here's something I teach on with regularity: God is not concerned with your happiness. He's concerned with your obedience.That's not an easy truth. It's not a pleasant truth.But it is a "true" truth.And it comes with a promise: any time we pursue happiness as a goal,...

So yesterday we tackled one of those subjects that churches like us usually avoid: praying in tongues.I tried to "de-weird" something that is inherently, well, weird.As part of the message, I told of my own journey from skepticism about tongues to pursuing it to...

One day last week, Good Shepherd hosted a gathering from the Mosaix Network, which is a nation-wide ministry of like-minded pastors and church leaders.What is the subject on which all these people are like-minded?Building and growing multi-cultural churches. At Good...

We had post-it notes all over the Worship Center on Christmas Eve.The theme had to do with "remembering" -- marking the interventions of God in your life.As a response, we invited the people to write down God's interventions on post-it notes (we put three in every...

Notice anything about these two church logos?Neither mention Methodism.Yet these are two of the most influential and effective Methodist churches in the USA -- one of them in Indiana and the other in Houston.There's some interesting conversation in the blogosphere...

So today we had a planning meeting to lay out the first Sunday morning message series of 2009.And as always happens, more and better ideas emerge out of that group than I could ever come up with on my own. Those meetings are why series like Oddballs and Loved have...