I am a PK (preacher’s kid) and have followed in my Dad’s footsteps as a pastor for 17 years now.  One of my fondest memories growing up as a PK was after the church services were over and Dad changed out of his Presbyterian robe, we would head to McDonalds to be “rewarded” for a job well done with Big Mac’s.  Another Sunday was in the books and so we stuffed our faces with two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.   Thus began my unhealthy relationship with food.   I know there are so many of you who get this.  Food – oh – innocuous food.  We need…

“Why do we need another church?”  As our family embarks on leading our third church start-up (aka “plant”), I’m getting this question a lot.  I doubt I would get it as much out West where there are very few churches per capita.  Nor do I imagine I’d get this question in areas overseas where Christianity is a decidedly minority culture.  But here in St. Louis, where there are gobs of churches, the question is totally understandable.   The church’s purpose To begin to answer this question, we have to start with the reason the church exists.  Foundationally, the church is not a place to ensure your eternal destiny and relieve your guilt a few times a…

Aristotle was a smarty pants.  Especially, in my opinion, in his understanding on how to persuade listeners in his famous work simply called, Rhetoric.  At its systematical core, he explains that there are three means of persuasion:  Logos (an intellectual reasoning), Ethos (a speakers credibility) and Pathos (the emotional connection with the listener).  Without all three, there is no persuasion.  No change in the listener. Fast forward about 2300 years to today and dip your toe in the waters of neurobiology with me for a moment.  I’ve been reading about such things a lot these days with the question of how to make the form of rhetoric I’m most interested…

When I started this blog several months ago upon our transition from Austin to St. Louis, my hope was to write every few weeks or so, not only to keep my writing muscles sharp while I was temporarily away from the pulpit, but also – hopefully – as an encouragement to you.  My hope was that it would add value to anyone who read it.  One of the traps of the calling of a pastor is to think we always need to be adding value, to be useful, to be helpful.  And honestly that’s why I haven’t written in a couple of months.  I just haven’t been in a place…

Yesterday was an emotionally charged day in America.  And today will be no different, as millions of us are tuned into the Brett Kavanaugh senate hearings and the accusations against him by Christine Blasey Ford.  After reading many opinion articles, posts and tweets, it’s been interesting to see how we deal with the emotion all around – on both sides.  I don’t think we’ve done it very well.   We don’t know what to do with emotion a lot of the time.  Emotion is unpredictable and at times, threatening, and it often doesn’t fit nicely into our enlightenment influenced rationality.  We have come to believe that emotion is dangerous and…

During the reality of the Great Depression, self-help writer Napoleon Hill wrote a phrase that would become part of the American psyche:  “A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.”  Rooted in the virtue of perseverance, the mantra was a part of his rags-to-riches recipe for the “American Dream” in the midst of a time of great hardship.  And for generations now that mantra has been entrenched in the American value system and has become – in part – how we evaluate winners and losers. Winners persevere. Quitting is for shameful losers.   There is good wisdom in having a persevering heart and character.  The Bible is chock-full of…

I’ve moved 30 times in 50 years, so I should be good at this by now.  My experience merits an upper-level management position at Mayflower or Two Guys and a Truck or U-Haul.  But the truth is, I’m still not very good at moving.  Moving is HARD.  And this latest one from Austin to St. Louis in some ways has been the hardest of all.  But it’s also been the healthiest.     I’ve moved so much for all the very practical reasons that many in today’s transient culture move:  job changes, roommate shuffles, etc… But I’ve also moved for deeper, unhealthy reasons as well.     I’ve moved because…

This is my mid-life crisis.  It’s a Mercedes AMG GT.  Do you like it?   In all seriousness, at mid-life now I am doing what many at my age do.  I’m taking stock of my life.  I’m looking back at where I’ve come from and looking forward toward where I want to go – what I hope to change, how I hope to grow, and what I want to do with the second half of my life.  It’s an exercise of both regret and gratitude.   In the first part of this initial post (here), I reflected on my desire to enter more deeply into my long walk with Christ…

My wife “jokes” (without laughing) that I have two gears:  5th and off.  Yeah, I guess it’s not funny.  As I said in the first two parts of this initial post (here and here), my life has been driven largely by a destination orientation – a fast pursuit of goals in 5th gear.  At age 50 now, I’m learning that those pursuits at that pace has caused me to miss a lot of God’s grace along the way.  A lot of 2nd, 3rd and 4th gear grace.  So my hope now as I transition from the harried rush of 15 years as senior pastor back to student is to find…

I started going to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) in Colorado with my family when I was 7 years old and have been there on vacation almost every year since.  It has deeply shaped me.  Of the valuable lessons learned there, one of the most important was about setting goals and being smart about the means to achieve them.  I remember my Dad getting out the park map (with John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High playing in the background) and circling all the peaks and lakes we were going to hike each summer.  All perfectly scheduled so that the hardest goals were near the end of our vacation time, thus giving…