This past year we lost my wife Lori’s wedding ring. It is the ring that I bought her 15 years ago and while it wasn’t that expensive, it meant a lot to us. The diamond had been cracked down through the center, but I kept putting off fixing it. I just took it for granted. Until it was gone. We searched for hours and hours. We emptied trash bags. We looked in ever crack and crevice of the house. My…

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I’m loving the series we just started at Central called The Christmas Song (Remix). We are looking at the first Christmas song, Mary’s song, in Luke 1. I’m excited to dig into Mary’s song further this next weekend. You can check out this last week’s message here today or tomorrow. All of it has me thinking about Christmas music, which I love. I can listen to Christmas music all year round, and I often do. (Yes, this drives my sweet…

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Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We stayed home and just spent time together as a family. It was really great and special. Here’s a few things I’m thankful for this week: I’m thankful for our awesome staff and volunteers who gave away 400 turkey dinners to families in need this year! I’m thankful for Bill Butterworth and his willingness to share a great message at Central. I’m thankful for our year-end offering emphasis The Rescue. We’re trying to help rescue…

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Last night Lori and I along with the kids put up Christmas decorations. At least we started the process. I know many of you can’t imagine doing this before Thanksgiving, but the calendar just worked for us to do it. Plus I love it when Thanksgiving feels like Christmas in our home. Immediately we hit challenges. The lights on one tree (yes, we have two) have been systematically going out and we’ve been patching it up. This time we couldn’t…

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Our team recently did one of my all-time favorite elements for a service. This is Chelsey’s story and it reminds us why we do what we do. This is why we sacrifice, serve, give, pray, teach, counsel, encourage and love others. We are on a rescue mission. I’m so thankful for what God has done in her life!

A while back someone posed this question to me: “I am experiencing spiritual vertigo. I want to have equilibrium in regards to spiritual things. I want to trust God more and myself less. I know what to read and where to go, but how do I actually live it?” Spiritual vertigo can be a real challenge. I spent years frustrated as a believer because my life and faith just don’t always seem to balance out. Sometimes I’m consistent; sometimes I’m…

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I’m always learning new things about Jesus. This past week I read a story in Mark about Jesus healing a deaf man who could hardly speak. I’ve read this story dozens of times and have taught on it both in the church and at the college level. But thanks to Tim Keller and his book King’s Cross, I saw something completely unexpected which leads me to be even more amazed with Jesus. Mark says that Jesus took the deaf man…

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Yesterday my 8 year old came in the house and said, “Uh, Dad, I accidentally threw a rock and broke the glass in the back of the minivan.” At first I didn’t believe it, but sure enough he completely shattered the back glass. It surprised me because I remember trying to shatter car window glass at a junkyard years ago and it was incredibly hard to do even with a sledge hammer!     I asked him how he “accidentally”…

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Catalyst just posted an article I did from my book Torn called “Covering Up.” Check it out here along with lots of great content they continually post.