Safe People & Safe Community

Did you ever think about who you’d like to meet in Heaven, other than Jesus? Some of the characters in the Bible will be fascinating to hang out with and grab a cup of coffee, even though I don’t drink coffee. Imagine sitting down with Noah to ask how he wrangled all the animals and got them on the ark before it started raining. Or Moses to share what it was like walking through the Red Sea on dry land. Then there’s Joseph, and David, and Peter, and Paul,…

When I hear the word, retreat, it conjures up a negative connotation. It feels like surrendering or reversing course due to some error in judgment. Webster’s first way of defining retreat is an act or process of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable. You see, doesn’t that seem a little cowardly? If you read further into Webster’s explanation of what it means to retreat, you’ll find this: a period of group…

Listen Former England Football Captain, David Beckham, recounts being sent off in the 1998 World Cup Finals: “It was probably the longest walk in my life… looking back I’m not sure what thoughts were going through my mind: it was a swirl of fear, guilt, anger, worry and confusion. My head was spinning… I walked into the dressing room. The rules stated that I had to stay in there for the remainder of the match. England lost. We were out of the World.…

Listen Author and theologian Russell Moore described noticing the eerie silence in the Russian orphanage where he adopted his boys. Someone later explained that the babies had stopped crying because they learned that no one would respond to their cries. Attachment theory helps bring an understanding of how critical our early childhood experiences form how we relate to others. According to psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, a child’s early relationship with…

Listen If you haven’t heard yet I’d suggest tuning in to what God is doing at Asbury University in Kentucky. Here’s the way Jake Taylor put it on NBC News, “A Christian service at a college chapel in Kentucky has ballooned into a nonstop prayer and worship session that some are calling a "revival" — and people are traveling thousands of miles to take part in it after seeing viral videos on TikTok.” “The first day we had a…

Listen “What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’ - could set up on their own as if they had created themselves - be their own masters - invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution. classes, empires, slavery - the long terrible story of man trying…

Listen Church is not a building. Church is not an event that takes place on Sundays. I know, it's how we think of it. "I go to First Baptist." "We are members of St. Luke's." "Is it time to go to church?" Much to our surprise, that is not how the Bible uses the term. Not at all. When the Scripture talks about church, it means community. The little fellowships of the heart that are outposts of the kingdom. A shared life. They worship,…

In 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz made the first purchase with bitcoin (a digital currency then worth a fraction of a penny each), paying 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas ($25). In 2021, at its highest value during the year, those bitcoins would have been worth well more than $500 million. Back before the value skyrocketed, he kept paying for pizzas with coins, spending 100,000 bitcoins total. If he’d kept those bitcoins, their value would’ve made him a billionaire sixty…

I was driving last summer with some gals, all of whom are really pretty and slender and smart and have a lot of friends. (So, yeah, intimidating gals.) I risked asking them the question, “Do you feel like you fit in?” Looking at their lives from the outside, I expected their answers to be, “Yes. Sure!” None of them said that. All five, after a lengthy pause and with lowered voices, confessed, “No. I don’t.” Okay, then. The cat&rsquo…