Get a hobby. This is my advice for Christians everywhere, and especially those who are intentional about living out their faith in culture. For some reason, many believers act as though time spent doing anything other than witnessing and studying the Bible is time wasted. But those same people have an extremely difficult time relating to and interacting with nonbelievers. [...]

My team had an interesting discussion over the last couple of days. This isn’t as remarkable as it might sound, but while most people spend Christmas talking about football and shopping, our team talks about ecclesiology. Who says we aren’t committed to our jobs? (And no, there is no truth to the rumor that we deliberately discussed “work” issues in [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I itunsed the first episode of “One Punk, Under God,” a six-part documentary on the life of Jay Bakker (Jim and Tammy Faye’s son). It basically tells the story of his unique childhood (growing up in a Christian theme park?) and his life now, as the pastor of Revolution, a church he started in an [...]

Backyard Bible Clubs. Youth Camp. Sports ministries. If you do any of these as evangelistic outreach, I’ve got a question for you: are you taking advantage of children? Yeah, I know- you came to faith through VBS when you were six years old. If it “worked” for you, it can’t be that bad, right? Let’s just say, for the sake [...]

In my last post, Welcome to the Big Show, I tried to stress the importance of making ministry as personal as possible by keeping events small and culturally appropriate. Still, there is something I’d like to add: I’m not against big events because they don’t “work.” Many people have come to faith in Christ through crusades and circus-tent revivals. Pizza [...]

A few days ago, I took part in a great discussion about faith. A Catholic, an Atheist, an Agnostic, and I (sounds like the beginning to a bad joke) sat around a table in the smoking section of a cafe that was really too small to go to the trouble of designating “sections.” We took turns sharing what we believed, [...]

This is a follow-up to my last post, Back Burner. I believe that relationships are the context in which the gospel should be shared. Real relationships. This means that the only filter I apply to my ministry is my trust that the people that God brings our way are the people in whom He is working. I pursue natural friendships [...]

Sometimes missionaries struggle with the reach of our influence. In their efforts to start a church planting movement, they see it as a good thing to interact with as many people as possible. This is the basic mentality behind most of the “broad seed sowing” activities our people do. Tracts, door-to-door visits, and drama in the park are all efforts [...]

The Bible doesn’t talk a lot about Jesus’s physical appearance. In Isaiah 53:2 it tells us that Jesus was nothing special to look at. I’ve always taken that to mean that He was just very plain. If he was too handsome, we probably would have read about His following of young girls. And he certainly wasn’t too ugly, because well, [...]

I think the best way to handle the tough call of whether a person is saved or not is to not try to answer it. “Judge not, lest you be judged” is usually quoted by judgemental people as they pass judgement on someone. “I’m not judging you,” they like to say, “God is.” But I read where Jesus tells us [...]