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Why Do We Make It So Complicated?

Jesus at the Fringes

It’s amazing how Jesus takes root in the fringes of society when you empower Christ in folks rather than trying to bring “church” to them, take them to “church” or do “church” for them.

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Embrace

Room at the Inn

This Christmas, the question yet remains: Is there still no room at the inn? Take a chance. Embrace the Joseph’s and Mary’s of our age.

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Old Covenant Church

Old Covenant Church

Why are most churches Old Covenant, rather than New Covenant?

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A Hollow Gospel

A Hollow Gospel

Broken lives and real people are inconvenient and demand more than your hollow gospel and podium-oriented focus can give. But praise God, you have great meetings!

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Lost

I Saw Satan Fall

Confession, forgiveness and repentance have become forgotten ordinances that we have twisted into ineffective spiritual abstractions. As a result, most churches have lost the ability to meaningfully administer those graces today.

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Crossing Over Chasm

Church?

Have we drifted so far from Biblical norms that we can’t even call a group of Christians who are fulfilling the Biblical mandates for “church” a “church” because the word “church” has become so corrupted?

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Mentoring Entrepreneurs

Here’s a TV program that’s been airing in our area about one of the ministries in which I’m involved. I, and others, have been mentoring and working with folks who are gifted with entrepreneurial aptitude. Our focus is helping them start and grow new businesses, based on solid, real-world experience and sound Biblical principles.

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Final Product!

Christian Counseling Class

I will be teaching a semester-long Christian counseling class beginning next Tuesday, September 6th, through early December. We will be meeting every Tuesday evening at my home just south of Manassas, Virginia, from 7:00 to 9:15 pm.

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Confronting Abusive Pastors, Part 3: A Mandatory Public Reprimand

What if an unrepentant leader’s sin is public and brings reproach on the church, or is an abuse of his position of trust and power in the church? Then he must be openly rebuked as a public warning to all – no exceptions! 1 Timothy 5 teaches this.

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The Storm

The Storm

There is something in the prophetic personality that loves the thunder, the lightning and the storm.

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Understanding the Seven Motivational Gifts

This PowerPoint presentation looks at the seven gifts listed in Romans 12, and the motivations and ways that different people use those differing gifts.

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A Tale of Two Ministries

In nature, there’s a word for a place with inflow but no outflow: It’s called a swamp. God’s people are not called to be dead, stagnant swamps, but to offer living water: Cool, fresh, flowing and life giving. Unfortunately, too many church gatherings are about inflow and not outflow. Churches today are focused on meetings [...]

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Diverse Gifts and Church Meetings, Part 1: The Motivational Gifts

It’s one thing to embrace Paul’s metaphor of the church being the Body of Christ, where everyone participates and ministers one to another according to our unique spiritual gifts. It’s quite another thing to figure out how to do that in practical terms, especially when we meet together and abstract principles hit cold, hard reality.

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The Church in the New Testament: Its Form, Function and Purpose

Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride! In this PowerPoint presentation, all that you think of as “church” is about to be challenged so God can woo us back to being, once more, the multi-faceted, wonderful, exciting Body of Christ.

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Life!

My greatest joy is walking with guys as they learn to stop being knuckleheads and become men; to minister to hurt and wounded women as they find not just healing, but health and wholeness; to let others come forth into life and gifting as they exceed me in the Kingdom. For all of this, Lord, [...]

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Helping or Enabling?

It’s hard cut lose a man you’ve been ministering to and let him ultimately bear the full consequences of the mess he’s made of his life — not to hurt him, but to let him finally hit bottom. I am friends with and minister to men and women who most people, and many churches, shun [...]

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Authentic Church

“So here’s what I want you to do. When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight… Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a [...]

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Reboot

God seems to be laying a foundation for yet another of His periodic, history-changing interventions in the affairs of man. Over the last two thousand years there have been many such paradigm shifts, and it’s naive to think that our current, settled status quo will somehow be exempt from the unsettling but progressive advance of [...]

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Whole Health

The more pastoral counseling I do, the more I realize how often people deal with life’s traumas, hurts and disappointments by suppressing their hearts and their spirits. Instead of being healthy, integrated people, they numb out or otherwise retreat exclusively into the realm of their minds — i.e., their analytical logic and reason. They are [...]

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True Ministry

Last night, we had one of our best times of “participatory church” as we seamlessly shared a meal, partook of communion, fellowshipped and ministered one with another — and none of it depended on me! The last several weeks have been very emotionally and physically exhausting for me. On top of my best friend dying, [...]

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Repentance, Forgiveness and the Kingdom of God

Recorded before a group of men in the local jail, this 55 minute audio teaching explains how we find peace and freedom when we allow God, through authentic Biblical confession, repentance and forgiveness, to change what we think, believe and perceive. That, in turn, allows us to know the righteousness, peace and joy that comes [...]

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Final Product!

Improbable Church

If you saw the church that meets in my home, you would laugh and wonder: “What can God do with these people?” Yet, isn’t that God’s way: to establish his Kingdom on earth by transforming lives, cultures, nations and history not with the ordained, but with the ordinary?

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Worship

A hilarious spoof on worship.

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Pimping the Gospel

For the prosperity gospel televangelists, God’s highest purpose is to bless me by satisfying my carnal desires for wealth, health and power – but only if I bless them first.

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Old Covenant Church

The Lost Art of Dialogue

Our whole paradigm for “doing church” needs to radically shift from monologues delivered from podiums that safely isolate our leaders from effective fellowship.

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Uncertainty

Evangelical Prophets or Martyrs?

Why do those “on point” for the Kingdom of God increasingly seek refuge from the prevailing pop-theology (or dare I say lack of theology) and me-focused brand of Christianity that animates many of our church leaders and cuts believers off from the great historic doctrines and creeds of our faith?

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Jesus In Us and Through Us

Participatory Church

My journey from traditional “church”, and some of what I’ve learned about being the church – the exciting, enticing, enthralling and multi-faceted Body of Christ!

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Embrace

The Gift of Mercy

Mercy is the most powerful, but most abused, of all the spiritual gifts.

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Indigenous Church in the Local Jail

Following God’s Presence

Life, and the sweet presence of God, await us as He simply bids us “come”.

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Choices

Gifts, Calling and Validation

Like many, I found my validation in my gifts and abilities. If we understand the different spiritual gifts listed in Romans 12 – and find the one that corresponds to our personality – then we can instead begin to find our validation in pleasing the Father.

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The Church in D Pod

This Sunday, like most Sundays, I will be fellowshipping with the “Church in D Pod” at the local jail. D Pod is a unit housing around a hundred men, and God has been pouring out his new wine in an exciting way among those inmates. A couple of months ago, I started shifting my focus [...]

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The Sunday "God Show" at Your Friendly Podium Church

When did “church” become a podium-focused “God Show” watched by passive spectators for an hour or so each Sunday morning? Where do we even find that in Scripture? I believe that the days of the “podium church” and the Sunday “God show”are passing — where we gaze each Sunday past the back of the head [...]

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New Wine Sucks

As God brings forth new wine in a new generation, there’s a fundamental dynamic that can’t be ignored. To put it bluntly, new wine sucks! In my younger days, I was an amateur wine maker. So I know what Jesus means when he says, “no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he [...]

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New Wine And Old Skins

Here’s an interesting article, reprinted below, on how people will stick to what they believe or think even in the face of contrary facts or circumstances. As I’ve watched people react to challenges and controversies over the last couple of months, and to God bursting old wine skins as he brings forth new wine, I can [...]

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Post-Release Community

I’ve been meeting with various brothers who also minister in the informal Christian networks I’m part of, along with others, to discuss starting a weekly fellowship (possibly in my home) for ex-inmates. My burden is for men whose lives are dramatically captured by God in jail, but then stumble when they get out because they [...]

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