Three Crucial Moments in the Spiritual Journey There are three crucial moments in every person’s spiritual journey, moments that truly test our commitment to Christianity, to Jesus Christ himself, and to this faith that we profess. I can almost guarantee that if you haven’t been there yet, you are now, or you will be soon. If it’s not one, it...
Controversial Names of Jesus Following Jesus Christ called himself a lot of controversial names. In fact, if you’ve ever worshiped here live at the core and grabbed a cup of coffee out in the lobby, you might have looked up and seen a wall where we have painted and printed this massive name of Jesus. All around Jesus are the names that he called...
Two Different Jesuses? Following, in early 2023, two American sports commentators clashed over who is following the real Jesus. On one side was former NFL coach and Super Bowl champion, now NFL commentator Tony Dungy—maybe you’ve heard of him—and on the other side was sports writer and USA Today columnist Nancy Armor. The online dispute started...
The Decline of Christianity in America When I was born back in 1980 here in Wisconsin, the United States of America, out of every 10 Americans surveyed, nine of them claimed to be Christian. Now that I’m middle-aged, here in my 40s and 2020s America, it is no longer the case. According to research done by the Pew Research Center, now it’s not...
The Unwritten Rule of Christmas Eve There’s this unwritten rule that you can’t find anywhere in the Bible, and they don’t teach it to you officially at Bible college when you’re training to be a pastor, but they really should. The unwritten rule is this: at Christmas Eve church, you have to sing «Joy to the World.» It is in everyone’s best...
Warning: This Song Is Not Relaxing If you’re the kind of person who loves those peaceful Christian Christmas songs—the ones where the stars twinkle in the sky above that little manger, where the peaceful baby lies and the cows are low, but not too loud to wake him up. The ones that you can just push play on, take a deep breath, relax your mind...
Why We Love Classic Christmas Music The Washington Post published a really fascinating piece of research in an article entitled «Why We Love Christmas Music.» Essentially, what they did was look at the Christmas playlists that most of us play—the songs that topped the charts last Christmas, the Christmas before, and the Christmas before that,...
Christians Struggling with Evangelism Apparently, most of the Christians who attend our church are pretty bad at one of Christianity’s most important parts. A few months ago, we sent a survey out to our church family, and about 400 people sent back their replies. Based on the data that they shared, the kind of people who replied were the most...
The Bible Is a Hard Book I found this great quote the other day that I wanted to share with you. I’ll put it up on the screen. The quote was, «The Bible is easy to understand.» Do you know who said that? I’ll show you: no one ever. I should say, personally, I love the Bible. As a church, we are infatuated with the Bible. I’ve been reading the...
The Challenge of Self-Control with Devices I’m not sure if it’s the way that phones are organized and brilliantly designed. I’m not sure if it’s the chemicals in our brain or just the common lack of self-control, but for a lot of us, when we get too close to certain devices, we end up going too far. We end up looking at more things than we...
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