I’ve realized something about myself. Like many, if not all people, I enjoy a good story. I think this is built into all of us by our Creator. We were made in His image and likeness, which means we are spirit, mind, and body, and those three bear resemblances to our creator in many ways. I think one of the similarities we share with our Creator is the desire to be creative. This also produces an appreciation for the creative, I.E.; art, music, and especially story. I believe in all of our stories we are quite often telling a story within a story. A narrative within a much bigger narrative. In our stories, we often deal with the struggles of good and evil; darkness and light; love and hate; condemnation and redemption; sin and salvation. I’m persuaded that this is because we are part of the bigger story, and we’re all struggling trying to understand it, even if we don’t realize it… even if we don’t want to believe that we’re in this divine meta-narrative. The Bible says that God has put eternity within our hearts.We have an awareness that there is something more. How we go about dealing with that awareness can be quite the story. [Read more...]
Great Video on Suffering to Worship
The Reason for Man
This past Saturday morning we kicked off our first Men’s Group of the year. We’ve done things like this in the past, but we really feel like there is a clear direction from the Lord with this latest one. Myself and one of the elders, Kevin Vaughan, are heading up the group, and treating it as a sort of “Man School”. Our intention is to steep the men in the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and let the Holy Spirit use us to get to the heart of the matter with the men in our church.
We are breaking things down into short series’, usually less than 6 weeks long. Our first series is called, “The Reason for Man”. We took the idea from the first question of Westminster Shorter Catechism, which asks, “What is the chief end of man?”, then it answers, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” After a great men’s retreat the weekend before where we looked at worship and idolatry through the lense of Romans 12, we felt like this was a great place to start with our men.
So many men today, especially in the church, don’t have a clear reason for their existence. If asked about their reason for being, they would probably each answer with something a little different, and “God” probably wouldn’t be in the majority of the answers. It is our desire to point our men to the truth of their existence as found in scripture, and see them changed by the grace of God.
Changes are coming along nicely
Well, I think the graphical changes are coming along nicely. I went through a few theme layouts before I settled on one that I felt I could make my own through custom graphical changes. I settled on the Mocha child theme from studiopress.comstudiopress.com. I’ve been very pleased with them since I purchased my first theme from them almost two years ago for our church’s site. They do a great job with keeping their themes fresh and current, and their support is great. I have to tip my hat to Brian Gardner, the creator of studiopress. (if I actually wore hats then that would probably seem like a more significant gesture.)
Anyway, I plan on doing a few more changes to the site’s structure and organization of content in the future, but for now I think things are looking decent.
Changes on the site
Just a quick update that I’ll be doing some changes to the site. I’ve changed the look a little, but I’ll probably tinker with it some more so it’s a little more custom. I’m also going to be going through and creating pages that actually function as a forum so people can post questions and thoughts that aren’t necessarily related to posts I’ve made on the site.
Keep your eyes peeled for more. I have a few things I want to write about so I can revive my poor little site! Look for future posts on worship and idolatry, and my thoughts on the recent news about Jennifer Knapp coming out of the closet.




