One of my favorite chapters in the Bible is Romans 6. I particularly love the beautiful portrait it paints of baptism. There, the apostle Paul presents baptism (immersion in water, as defined by the Greek term that’s used in Romans 6, for the purification from sin) as… Participation in the Gospel of Christ – just […]
Last week I was in a Discovery Bible Study with a couple of people, discussing a portion of the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4. The story presents a beautiful portrait of Jesus as he pays no attention to the cultural, ethnic, gender, and social biases that govern too many of […]
Over the last two months, our congregation has been hosting a free marriage seminar that has been a great source of encouragement and enlightenment to all who have attended. Each week in our seminar, we give away one of four books on marriage that we highly recommend to every engaged or married couple. You might […]
Popular blogger and preacher Carey Nieuwhof recently wrote a blog post that caught my attention because of its sheer honesty. In it, Nieuwhof identifies a major problem in the church, which is the lack of responsibility that many Christians take for the condition of their own hearts, attitudes, and actions. Here’s his post: There’s a […]
The other night our family found ourselves in possession of something very rare for us – a free night with nothing on the schedule! So what do you do when you don’t have homework to do, activities to attend, or appointments to keep? You go bowling, of course. It’s not that we are regular bowlers […]
Chuck Lawless recently wrote this practical piece that should inspire us to make this week more than “just o.k.” __________________________________________ Maybe you’ve seen the AT&T commercials that point out why “just ok is not ok.” The point is that there are some situations where “just ok” is not sufficient. These commercials don’t speak about the […]
This week I had some great conversations with various people about discipleship, evangelism, and missions – thinking deeply about how we Christ-followers can make Jesus known to the people around us. I love being around others who have a passion for spreading the good news that a Savior has come and is willing and able […]
This past Sunday during the Shepherd’s Prayer in our worship service, one of our congregation’s spiritual shepherds prayed an incredible prayer over us and for us. The line in his prayer that really stood out to me was when he asked God to put people in our lives “who would rebuke us when we make […]
Tonight I will be teaching a new session of our monthly D-School at Alameda Church of Christ to a small group of our members. D-School is a 4-week discipleship training course that is designed to help followers of Christ become disciple-makers for Christ. We started it at the end of last year and, so far, […]
After a recent sermon, one of our church members recommended this song to me:
