The other day a couple of students popped by my office to visit, chat and grab lunch at the same time. While we were sitting around the table catching up on the latest happenings, they told me about a sermon...

  It’s so easy to get caught up in the things of this world. We quickly loose sight of the eternal purpose of God in our lives and allow our minds and hearts to focus on the temporal things around...

“I can’t worship a God that allows so much pain and suffering.” “I think Jesus was a great teacher, but I don’t think he resurrected after he died.” “How can you really believe that Jesus actually turned water into wine...

The other day I was sitting having sushi with a good friend of mine when we started talking about a classmate of hers in her college. A fellow Christian, this person was capable of spending hours in prayer everyday, constantly...

I love missional communities. Not simply for theological reasons, but because of how they help cultivate spiritually healthy people. As I have taught and practiced missional community over the past year and a half, there have been three main ways...

For those of us in the Catholic tradition, today is the feast day of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini.  Frances Cabrini was born near the city of Milan, Italy in 1850.  Fascinated as a young girl by the stories of missionaries,...

I was recently reminded of one of my favorite books, Jonathan Safran Foer’s soon-to-be-required-reading-for-students, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”  In it, 10-year old Oskar loses his father in the attack on 9-11, and is struggling to navigate life without his...

“A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain.” This past month, I read the story of a World War II veteran, Olympian, and POW. Louis Zamperini, born in Torrance, California, was a troubled child growing up with immigrant...

The Preparation One day in August, I eagerly answered a phone call from the youth minister for Gateway Community Church in Wylie – I had been looking forward to this call for quite a few iterations of phone- and text-tag....

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It...