I don't know what Jesus feels about facebook, but my guess is that he thinks it is from the devil.  I realize that everyone has their own personal "reconnection" story where their long lost __________ was found.  I still find it curious that people who have hundreds of "friends" don't realize that they actually don't have that many friends, or that the world cares what they had for breakfast, what their frustrated with or looking forward to in the next 30 minutes, or how many ways they can find to make a face to describe their emotions with punctuntion and slashes.  Another incredible phenomena is the false reality that people live with, believing that if an entity, organization, or group exists on facebook, then it has legitimacy.Those little irritations pale in comparison to facebook's ultimate contribution to the world--it has become the passive aggressive person's best friend.  While we'd like [...]

LESSON #2 - YOU HAVE TO LOVE JESUS MORE THAN YOU LOVE PEOPLE.I've heard it said that you cannot love God without loving people.  I couldn't disagree more.  I don't believe you can love people unless you love God, more accurately, unless you know God's love as seen in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  There is a reason why Jesus said the greatest and first commandment was to "Love God".  If we love anything BUT God as first and foremost, we commit idolatry.  We are creatures of worship who replace our "first love" with things like sex and alchohol.  But we also worship our spouses, our children, or some other relationship.  When those relationships begin to give us meaning, hope, purpose, and joy more than our relationship with God, there is a problem.  It is important to love others, but it is secondary to loving God as Jesus [...]

Some day I'll probably write a book.  I don't want to write a book so that I can make a name for myself, but becuase writing is how I process. You ask me a question, I'll respond with a 10 page paper.  It is what I do.  So, in the next few weeks I am going to process online the goods and bads of church planting over the last three years. Who am I kidding, most of the "lessons" we learnthat actually stick are the hard ones.  So, if no one reads this or if everyon reads this, I don't really care...it's cathartic for me.LESSON #1:  IF YOU CAN DO ANYTHING ELSE, DON"T PLANT A CHURCH. Planting a church is the most horrible wonderful thing anyone could do. And I will take every opportunity to tell people NOT to do it.  I used to think that planting a church would be [...]

After all the talk, I finally got my first tattoo.  Until I planted a church I never really considered getting tattoo. In other words, this wasn't an event I have been looking forward to for 15 years.  It seems that tattoos have become a bit more culturally acceptable which has resulted in everyone getting really stupid things permanently embossed on their bodies.  As a high school English teacher, I used to make fun of students who got tattoos, the ones who got their names on their butts, barbed wire on their arms, clovers on their feet, or Betty Boop on their...well.. let's just say that in 10 years it will be "Betty Droop".  People have asked me as a pastor if it is "ok" to have or get Tattoos.  They ask because some argue that the body, "as the temple of the Holy Spirit" should be treated as such and [...]