One of the most pressing pastoral concerns of our day is addressing the overwhelming fear that binds us in the Western world, and particularly in the United States. The noted writer Marilynne Robinson has an essay in her recent collection The Givenness of Things that boldly names this pervasive culture of fear in which we live (I highly recommend reading …
Because of some of the jobs I’ve had over the past couple years, I’ve learned quite a bit about copywriting. “Copy” refers to the words used on web pages, in ads, on promotional materials, etc. Copywriting is the art of writing copy that sells a product or service and convinces prospective customers to take action. It surprised me to realize …
In this season of Advent we learn about waiting. Waiting is painful. It brings anxiety and sometimes causes us to wonder where God is or if he cares. The prophet Malachi spoke of the Messiah’s coming in an eponymous Old Testament book: I have loved you, saith the LORD…Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before …
My husband and I recently returned from vacationing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a highly multiethnic city of 1.67 million people in a metro area consisting of 7.9 million people. The city itself is predicted to grow to 2.2 million by 2020. Kuala Lumpur is a global city, offering international financial services, headquarters to multinational corporations, a center for new ideas and …
My wife Deb and I recently moved our family to a northeastern suburb of Indianapolis to plant a church with our friends Matt and Sharon Tebbe. There were a few reasons for landing where we did, mostly having to do with the relationships our friends (who had arrived a few months before we had) were establishing. It seemed good to …
In Paul Murray’s novel Skippy Dies, there’s a point where the main character, Howard, has an existential crisis. “It’s just not how I expected my life would be,” he says. “What did you expect?” a friend responds. After pondering, Howard replies, “I suppose—this sounds stupid, but I suppose I thought there’d be more of a story to my life.” If you strung …
If we want to meaningfully connect with our neighborhood, we need to be able to read the city and neighborhood well. Exegeting a city or neighborhood is a basic task of a missionary, where you seek to “draw out” the meaning of a people and place in order to see the power of the gospel more fully transform the neighborhoods …