These posts are some of my most personal. I assume they will be utterly boring to some, fascinating to a few, and simply a strange curiosity to others. I am part of a denomination called the Church of God (Cleveland, TN), as is Renovatus Church...

Over against the rationalistic terms that came to dominate conversations surrounding Christian faith in the 20th century, the apostle’s creed concedes nothing to the language of defensibility. Here is a brash, audaciously simple claim that there is no reality, no apologetic, no system more fundamental than God...

When I say the apostle’s creed, I am swept again into the continuity of the Christian gospel. I am reminded that what we are doing as a church is neither novel nor new. The creed reminds me of both the smallness and the grandness of our local church...

Lurking beneath the calm surface of quaint traditions, the Gospel texts themselves present a more apocalyptic side of resurrection...

I think I may have already abandoned the generally helpful rule that “Christian” works only as a noun and not as an adjective. But I am a Christian, I am a leader, and I do have a deep conviction that leadership defined in explicitly Christian terms is different than any other kind. Articulating those distinctions is crucial...

Today I went trespassing. On the journey I was heartbroken, frightened and still later, bizarrely inspired. I had just finished up with a productive but very long board meeting. I had been with my colleagues on the Western North Carolina Youth and Christian Education board, and we met for 8 hours. Mondays are never particularly great for me...

I was about 12 years old, sitting in one of the old padded chairs in the chapel of East Coast Bible College. It was fall convocation, when all the students would gather for a week of prayer, worship, preaching, and two-hour altar services. My father was the president of East Coast for 9 years, during the most formative time of my life. I quite literally grew up on that campus—living there for 4 years, staying with my grandmother up by the lake in the summer...