Remember Charlie Brown’s wistful lament? “I think there must be something wrong with me Linus, Christmas is coming but I’m not happy, I don’t feel the way I’m suppose to feel.” Maybe you’re not feeling the joy either this holiday, and you’re asking yourself, “What’s wrong with me?” But its not just you, there’s something […]
“This will be a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Luke 2.12 For a lot of people, Christmas comes down to Christmas Eve, and Christmas Eve comes down to getting it over with, starting with Church. As a result, the vast majority of people try […]
Over the last couple of years, if you’ve been with us, you know that we’ve tried to do Christmas a little differently as a church family. If you’re new here, let me give you some background: the last two years we sponsored a program in which we encouraged people to spend at least a little […]
To all my faithful readers, a word of gratitude this Thanksgiving. I am grateful for all of you and the privilege to speak into your life. Some of you I have never had the opportunity to meet in person, but I’m happy that our paths have crossed here. Thanks for reading this blog and thereby […]
People are leaving the Catholic Church in droves. It’s an exodus that’s beginning to look like a stampede. You already know this from your circle of family and friends, I do from mine. But more than our antidotal experience a simple staggering fact tells the story. Currently one in three Catholics have walked away from […]
We wrapped up our second message series of the season today. It is always a little sad to come to the end of a series, and close the chapter. We called this series ‘Counterfeit gods” because we’ve been arguing that pagan worship is alive and well in our culture. Over the course of the series […]
A few years ago we decided to take a Saturday morning and bring together our parish staff and parish council. The focus of the meeting was a discussion on the purpose of the parish: our mission, vision and strategy. What we found at that time surprised us: there was far less shared understanding about who […]
In our current message series we’ve been looking at the counterfeit gods we set up in our life like sports or sex or food or things like control. This weekend we’re looking at the fake god of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is about smug superiority, pride, arrogance, narcissism. Typically it involves an unfavorable comparison: Not only do […]
Friday we will be closing registration for our first ever conference: MATTER. If you want to attend you need to register this week. Click here to do it now. MATTER will be held on Saturday, November 5. We’ll be taking a closer look at who we are, what we do and, more importantly, why we […]
The two most sacred holidays on the entire calendar are Christmas and Thanksgiving. This year the Ravens have home games on Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving evening. Nice. And families I know are casting aside family commitments and revered traditions to attend those games. Really nice. A dad I know got a ticket for the Thanksgiving […]
