A Pastor in The Northwest

As I walked to the church building today I was taken aback by the sheer cold, clear beauty of the fall season here in our part of the world. The millions of colors and shades of green, brown, orange, and red, oh my! Something about the cool, fresh breeze when it's 30-40 degrees out for me is so refreshing! Wow. Just staggeringly beautiful - by design! God is in the business of blowing us away with beauty even in the smallest bits! Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said, “The world will be saved by beauty.” Well, I like the idea but I think he may have missed the beauty of a grand Creator / Designer who loves us with abandon. We have a perfect Father who knows everything about us and can't stand to be away from us! Maybe today you can take a walk and soak up the beauty of creation all around you...I bet you'll want to pray a prayer of joy! He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what

When I was a kid, I didn't like the word NO. I felt like my parents had this word perfected. When we were shopping, "No, you don't need that" or when I wanted to hang out with friends, "No, not this time" or with regard to chores, "No, you can until your chores are done" - ugh! Can you relate? I thought my will was the right thing at all times. Boy, was I naive right? What did I know at that age! When we discover a God who sees everything and yet fiercely loves us reorganizes our sense of will (if we allow it). If He is in charge and cares for us more than anyone, we can trust that His ideas are better - that His will for us is the very best. If we could just submit right? In Jesus's last hours before His death on the cross, He too had to submit to the will of God and suffer. This must have been so difficult - traumatic really. Listen again to the writer of Hebrews (12:1-3 New English Translation): Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a

  Ah, the memories... I was about 35 years old and our 2 children were 5 and 9. We moved to Dallas in 2007 - the year of the first Apple iPhone release and a year or so before the great recession hit (yikes - remember that?). I had never preached 2 Sundays in a row in my life at this point. My wife Jackie and I had never planted a church before as the lead planters. But, as God had let us, on Sunday, October 21st, 2007, Dallas Church held its first public worship meeting at the Whitworth Elementary School cafeteria/gym. Looking back we were so clueless. God worked through us in spite of ourselves. Our initial launch team was a big reason we're still alive all these years later. Thinking back to how naive and foolish I was and, well, 'green' in ministry leadership, it is only by God's grace we can look back to lives changed, baptisms, weddings, marriages healed, and a city that would notice if we didn't exist. God is still working in and through all of us @ Dallas C

I woke up to the news of the attack on Israel like many of you a few days ago and it was heartbreaking to hear the news and see the devastation. I've since been learning more about this conflict and the history behind it all. Turns out there are many layers to it and more than a few players in this fight. What is especially difficult for me is those vulnerable men, women, and children caught in the crossfire. My heart is heavy for such loss. I don't know about you but today I'm praying for peace. I'm asking the Lord for justice. I believe that God's will is what is to be done on earth as in heaven. In the words of the ancient Hebrew prophet Micah, may we: Do justice(fairness),  love kindness (loyal in love) and, walk humbly(modest) before our God. This has also reminded me of some wisdom I've learned in my journey with Jesus: -Let us pray before we post. -May we choose love over hate. -Love our neighbor as ourselves. And this, "Lord, break our hearts for wh

Last weekend at the church I Pastor, I dove straight into Jesus' "Olive Grove Session(s)" this past weekend with a whopper of teaching about soon-ish and far-ish events. Some things He said would occur within a generation while other things would be delayed a bit. It is hard to know a lot for certain in this part of Scripture. In Matthew 24:12 Jesus speaks of a time where lawlessness increases and love grows colder. That's a bit of a bleak picture, right? The word in Greek for lawlessness is essentially 'no law' or in a sense (anomia), one becomes anti or against law. To take this further, Paul writes about a 'man of lawlessness' (2 Thessalonians 2:3-5) that some see as the 'anti-Christ' figure that will one day appear and I think there's a case for that person, and yet, according to 1 John, more than just one anti-christ (aka one who denies Jesus is Messiah) is present possibly signaling the end may come at any time now. In 2 Timothy 3, w