Tag: Evangelism

The Gospel Is for Everybody

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This week we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series. God has been doing a pretty incredible work at my church. We are experiencing explosive growth thanks to the movement of His Spirit in our midst. We are also on the cusp of breaking ground on an expansion and renovation of our current facilities. It’s a pretty exciting time, and we are most definitely going somewhere. But in order to make sure we are truly heading in the right direction, we need to remember who God made us to be. For the next three weeks, we are going to be explore afresh the basic elements of our identity as a church. Thanks for coming along for this journey with us.

The Gospel Is for Everybody

Social media can be a great tool for the advancement of the Gospel. But social media can also be a place where people vent their spleen without really thinking through what the full consequences of their words might be. I won’t ask you to raise your hand if you’ve ever posted something you later wish you hadn’t and even perhaps had to take down because of the negative impact it was having. And the thing is, because none of us are particularly disciplined with our words on a good day—whether they are coming from our mouths or our fingers—all of us are susceptible to this kind of thing. Even pastors. 

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Too Good Not to Share

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It’s common to get to the other side of a major event and wonder a bit about what we are supposed to do now. Easter is kind of like that. There’s all this build up and then…what now? What are we supposed to do in light of this incredible news that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day? As we wrap up our journey through Luke’s Passion Narrative, we are going to be talking about that very thing because that’s the very thing we find Jesus pointing the disciples to in the final conversation Luke records them having. Let’s take a look together at the “now what” of Easter.

Too Good Not to Share (Luke 24:36-53)
April 12, 2026 

Can I meddle just a bit this morning? Most college basketball observers figured that Duke was going to be the National Champion this season. But they didn’t. They actually wound up only making it to the Elite Eight. This is because UConn–who, of course, wound up getting smashed by Michigan in the championship this past Monday—had one of the most incredible, last-second, upset wins of the season. With just four seconds to go, Duke had a 2-point lead and the ball. All they had to do was inbounds the ball and hold it. But instead, a freshman UConn player intercepted an attempted pass at halfcourt. With time quickly ticking away, he frantically passed it to a teammate closer to the basket, but unable to do anything, he threw it back, and from near the halfcourt line, with under a second to go, this freshman threw up a prayer. The whole thing felt like one of those slow-motion moments at the climax of a sports movie even though, again, the whole thing played out in less than five seconds. With just four-tenths of a second remaining on the clock, the ball swished through the hoop and the game was essentially over. 

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Silhouette of a man kneeling in prayer on a hilltop during a vibrant sunset.

Morning Musing: Philippians 3:18-19

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“For I have often told you, and now say again with tears, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame; and they are focused on earthly things.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Paul was really passionate about leading people to Jesus. He was convinced beyond measure of the truthfulness of the Gospel, of the reasonableness of the Christian worldview. He vividly remembered the other side, and intimately understood the contrast between the two. He didn’t want anyone to be stuck living forever like he once was and was willing to go through just about anything to keep them from that so far as it depended on him. But he was also honest about the fact that not everyone was going to come around. The us-and-them divide was real. In the next few verses he contrasts one with the other. Let’s take a look starting with the latter.

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Gospel Situations

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If we are going to understand something well, we have to start with theory. There are basic things that need to be understood in any kind of a new venture. But eventually, theory has to give way to practice, or we don’t ever really learn the material very well. For the last four weeks we have stayed pretty abstract as we have talked about how to share the Gospel in post-Christian environment. Last week we took a step toward practicality, but we didn’t go far enough. Today we’re going all the way. Sharing the Gospel in a post-Christian environment will eventually require us to…you know…actually share the Gospel in a post-Christian environment. Let’s talk about how to do that as we wrap up our series.

Gospel Situations

Have you ever worked really hard to set up a perfect situation only to have it go awry on you? Maybe it was a date. You planned everything down to the smallest detail you could think of. But you didn’t account for that one thing, and it turned out to be a landmine that blew up the whole affair. Maybe it was a conversation with another person you knew was going to be difficult. You were dreading it, but you also knew it had to happen. So, you prepared the ground as carefully as you could in hopes of getting through it without too many bruises. But as soon as you started off down the path of whatever the subject was, everything fell apart on you. 

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Morning Musing: Philippians 1:15-19

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“To be sure, some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of good will. These preach out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, thinking that they will cause me trouble in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Only that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice because I know this will lead to my salvation through your prayers and help from the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

A few years ago, I listened to a podcast series called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. It’s about the former megachurch in Seattle by that name that was led by celebrity pastor Mark Driscoll. It was an enormous church that baptized hundreds of people and produced lots of great bands. Under the surface, though, years of stunningly toxic leadership became an iceberg that sunk the titanic community as fast as the famous ship. The church went from thousands of people worshipping together across fourteen campuses to closing its doors forever in a matter of months. In the aftermath of the collapse, there has been much criticism of the whole affair (including an entire podcast series!), questioning everything the church ever did. Was it all worth it? How should we think about the Gospel being proclaimed by people or in an environment that doesn’t ultimately reflect its ethos? Paul offers some challenging counsel here for us to explore.

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