The gospel is offensive. I’ve known this for awhile, but in a much more abstract way. In the back of my mind, I thought it was because Christianity–loving God, loving your neighbor–was offensive. It confused me, because this was my...

Everyone knows that college life is full of temptation.  College students have more freedom than ever before to do whatever they want to do.  There is temptation around every corner, the biggest of which is particularly damaging.  It can ruin...

For about the last fifteen years, I have worked to develop a campus-wide missional community movement at the University of Texas.  While we’re still far away from our goal of planting missional communities in every college, club, residence, and culture...

As I’ve shared the vision of missional communities with students, I’ve noticed a pattern. Most of the time, students get overwhelmed. It just seems like so much. Building relationships with non-Christians can seem daunting when you look at your schedule...

When I first arrived at college, I had a slew of beliefs that I’d acquired from a lifetime in religious America. Call it an ‘us vs. them’ mentality, or ascribe it to my natural tendency to assume the worst, but...

For those of us in the Roman Catholic tradition, we have heard the Church speak quite a bit about a new push in Catholicism, “The New Evangelization.”  The word “evangelization” is somewhat new to Catholic circles.  Not the concept or...

I miss neighborhood churches.  I know, I know.  In today’s world it’s not likely that we’ll ever go back to the liturgical tradition of parishes, but I am encouraged by some of the newer churches being planted to reach a...

  A new semester always brings me a sense of boundless optimism, usually along the lines of “I can do all the things!!” I have trouble remembering the burnout that overcommitment brought me in previous semesters, and feel (once again)...

Last January, as I sat on my bed and sketched out my goals for the year, I kept coming back to one simple and scary fact: I was just days away from co-leading a missional community (MC) at the University...

There is a mystery to the way prayer works.  Often the Biblical commands about prayer and the Biblical narratives about prayer seem to be at odds with one another.  Prayer often feels like a two-sided coin. This semester I would...