Category Archives: Ministry

Maybe I Don’t Disagree Because You’re An Atheist, But Because You’re Being A Moron

Atheist and other unbelieving friends:

You spend all day spouting your opinions, many of which I agree with because I can agree with a fellow human being outside the purview of our “religious affiliation,” or lack thereof — and I love you and respect you outside of our proclaimed identities.

But the moment I disagree with you — not having even brought up anything spiritual —suddenly you become a trashy pedestrian version of yourself with predictable, preprogrammed, Pavlovian-reflex statements about my “brainwashed zealot hive mind.”

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Question: How Do I Make My Feelings Not Get Creepy?

Anonymous asked:
What do you do when you have feelings for someone who you don’t know how they feel in return, and it is making you feel really depressed and obsessive? How do you not let that make you so depressed and take your focus off Christ? God is being faithful in my life and I am mad at myself for going into this slump for just a mere person and getting back into the spirit of depression.

Ah, well this old pickle.  Feelings can suck, yeah?

Back in my younger idiot days (which was last week [just kidding] {okay sort of kidding}]), I’d attach myself to pretty much any attractive fine young woman.  I was sort of an “emotional whore.”  My soul would pretty much reach out with tentacles and stretch over to my dumb crush of the week, and I couldn’t do anything.  I hated that part of myself and I’d get obsessive, clingy, even blame the girl for walking into my life. 

But all this points to a much bigger root issue.

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Question: I’m Gay And My Church Judges Me — What Do I Do?

averageinsecureteenageboy asked:
I’m gay, and have no plans of being otherwise. I just have a question that burns in my brain. I do believe in god, I do think we were created by someone, its just that when I go to church my with boyfriend it seems like a hostile environment. The church is traditional but accepts me and my partner because of my long history of going, but I still can not shake the fact that I feel in a hostile environment when I go to Sunday service. Whats your take on it?

Thanks for feeling comfortable enough to message about this.  I want you to know I got love for you and part of that means I bring some truth in, because I can’t possibly love you without being truthful.  So please allow me the grace to speak to you as plain as I do with everyone else; I don’t use kid gloves with anyone.

- It’s cool when you say you have “no plans of being otherwise.” I was a womanizing, near-alcoholic, porn-addicted, hard-partying, over-violent atheist and I had no plans of being otherwise.  I understand the sensitive issue of sexual orientation, but I would at the very least hear out all sides of the issue before making such a stubborn claim. 

No one, and I mean no one, who actually believes the Bible is somehow specifically hating on gay people.  Rather we uphold the beauty of biblical sexuality.  So I would really hear out why we call that the truth.  And be open to God interrupting your plans with other plans.  While we’re making them, He already has one.

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Quote: Ensures


God’s decision to forgive Peter required the death of his Son; Peter’s decision to forgive those who had offended him would cost him little more than his pride. The same is true for us.

In the shadow of my hurt, forgiveness feels like a decision to reward my enemy. But in the shadow of the cross, forgiveness is merely a gift from one undeserving soul to another. Forgiveness is the gift that ensures my freedom from a prison of bitterness and resentment.

– Andy Stanley


How To Retcon and Fanwank God: Punishment? Wrath? Discipline? Grace? Consequences? Just Because?

This is the part we don’t like to talk about.

Pastors, Christians, the blogger, the theologian, your hi-and-bye church neighbor — they all say that suffering is for a reason.

But be clear: What reason?

If you get cancer, you can assume that it’s:

A) A specific punishment from God for something you did.

B) A preview of God’s wrath.

C) Discipline to make you stronger.

D) Grace for a bigger reason, like a testimony to relate to people, or mercy from something worse.

E) Consequences from something you did, like smoking or a poor diet or building a nuclear bomb.

F) A random event, because God or fate or the universe felt like it.

At times it seems like all this is based on our human perspective, so that pain can be “made good” and suffering can be “redeemed.” But I’m not sure if it’s that simple, that trite, or that easy.

So which is it? What is the fine line between punishment and discipline and grace?

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Quote: Unchained


Very often people are afraid to forgive because they assume that if they forgive, injustice will triumph. Yet the counterintuitive wisdom of Christ reveals that the very opposite is true. It is forgiveness alone that has the capacity to break the chains of injustice and give us the possibility of a new future — a future unchained from the past and free of bitterness.

– Brian Zahnd


Question: God Says No But I Want It — What Now?

20120426-103747.jpg

Anonymous asked:
what do you do when you want something so badly, and you know it’s completely against God’s will, but you just don’t want to give it up? i can’t state it explicitly here, but it’s not a tangible object, and it’s not lust. i’m sorry for being so vague. i just don’t know what to do anymore. i haven’t brought it before God wholeheartedly considering the nature of the problem; there’s such a huge gap between my conscience and the rest of me. i know i need to surrender but it’s easier said than done.

I’m assuming you’re talking about some kind of temptation since it’s against the presumed Will of God. You’ll have to clear up if it really is against God’s Will, or if maybe there’s a hyper-religiosity happening.

With temptation, I feel for you there. That’s just one of those things that gets right in our face until we can’t see much else. But you have a choice now to run to the balcony and see it for what it really is.

Like I’ve said before: I wish I could bottle up all the regret you’re going to feel after you keep pursuing this thing, then hand it over to you as Liquid Regret After-Juice, so you can drink that and go, “Oh yeah, duh. That would be stupid.”

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Four Things To Remember When You Rebuke

Rebuking is one of the hardest things to do. We’re either too soft or too strict, and for most of us polite church people, we would rather go on a mission trip to a war-torn third world country than speak truth to our neighbor.

But once you’re ready to pay the cost of awkwardness, there’s some things we need to know.

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Kings, Courage, and Cowardly Lions: Maybe You’re Following God Because You’re Too Scared Not To

Sometimes you do the right thing because you’re tired, not because you love doing the right thing.

We obey God because we’re scared not to. There’s no real love for Him; just a fear of everything that could go wrong.

At times I imagine quitting this whole God-thing and going to Vegas, sleeping with hookers, ingesting every drug known to man, and crashing all the parties until I die from it. Maybe that’s too honest, but that’s my wicked heart. It wants evil because evil looks delicious.

Except I don’t do those things. Because of the law. Or I’m scared what people will say. Or the consequences of hookers and drugs and waking up with no teeth.

Very rarely do I think, I can’t do that because I love God, and I have better. Again, my wicked heart.

Maybe we’re not really growing here, but just getting too old to sin. Maybe it’s just a resignation to comfortable, boring modesty.

I am naturally a coward and I forget: God gave me a new nature. He gave me a God-sized heart that can hate evil and ferociously love Him. A Spirit of love, power, and self-discipline. A Spirit that says no to fear, which I must choose. I just forget.

You’re either growing up or just getting old.

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Quote: Convictions


I fear that far too many followers of Christ have been sucked into the angry political polarization that characterizes our culture — a culture that has come to venerate the enraged rant as an art form. And when we do this, the name Christian is diminished to an adjective for modifying certain political positions rather than a noun for a person who is deliberately attempting to imitate Jesus Christ. This absolutely must change. We can hold all the convictions we want, as long as we can hold them in love.

– Brian Zahnd


Getting Rebuked In The Face



I could tell they were uncomfortable.  They wanted to backpedal.  The hurt on their faces was real, for them and for me.  But it had to be said.

Genuine rebuke is a tough thing, because people who sincerely love each other cannot bear the awkwardness of telling the hard truth.  If you actually enjoy rebuking, your privilege should be revoked.

I was very grateful for their honesty, and let them know they were doing me a service.  It would’ve been a disservice for them to hide it.

Of course, it was hard not to interrupt, not to defend myself, not to come up with a million excuses.  But just because I don’t see it their way doesn’t mean that their way doesn’t count. 

If someone is offended by my action, no matter how innocuous I think it is, it should affect me because it affects them.  It’s important to you, so it must also be important to me. It’s not easy to think that way: and trust me, I had to fight the urge to escape it.

I’m grateful also because they had brought up a complete blind spot of which I was unaware.  We all have them.  That’s why they’re called blind spots. 

They also aimed to make me a more effective leader, a better person, a more thoughtful follower of Christ.  I could see it in their eyes.  I love them for that.

Thank you to my friends who keep me in check.  Thank you for paying the cost of awkwardness to tell me what’s right and what’s real.

Love you guys.


Question: So My Friend Is A Pagan Wiccan

Anonymous asked:
Does a Christian have to take unique precaution when interacting with people who are into pagan or witchcraft? For example, there is a pagan in my class and I want to invite her to come study for finals & hang, and if it comes up I’d ask her to come to church with me the next morning. I am not trying to convert her, but I do pray that God could use me to maybe minister to her, shes sweet. This is how I would be with any non-Christian acquaintance, is it any different? I wouldn’t be best friends!

I sense mixed messages here.

Can I ask you in a different way?

“Did Jesus have to take unique precaution when he came down from Heaven to earth to interact with us filthy slimy disgusting incompetent immoral human beings who would nail him to a dirty cross while spitting in his face and plucking out his beard and whipping out his flesh?”

I’m not trying to be cute here.  I know what you’re asking.  But people are not projects, and they will immediately sense if you have made them one.  Saying things like “I am not trying to convert her” and “I wouldn’t be best friends” is — well, you read that out loud to yourself.  She’ll know if you’re treating her like thin ice, or if you’re holding back, or if you’ve made up all these rules to be around her.

You have great motives in hoping God ministers to her, but what’s actually more important here is being friends.  If she’s one point for the scorecard of evangelism, not only will you be desperately frustrated if she doesn’t get saved, but you’ll somehow think it’s up to you.  Then when it does happen, you’ll dump that project for the next one. 

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Quote: Real


“Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

– C.S. Lewis


Before asking about this sexual holiness stuff:

When I get questions about fighting for “sexual purity,” I always check out your blog. 

Usually the blog is full of half-naked women, toned up hairless dudes, almost-but-not-quite-but-could-be-porn, and some suggestive-raunchy-provocative imagery. Always a slew of oily tanned celebrities.  Plus plenty of dirty jokes, anti-parent slurs, and all kinds of entitled, angry, spoiled, insufferable memes.

In other words, I would never ever in a billion years let you near my future kids.

If you’re seriously asking about how to fight for holiness — well, hey, like: shouldn’t you actually get serious about that?

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Seven Things The Holy Spirit Does

I know this whole “Holy Spirit lives in you” can be weird, mysterious, New-Age-ish, and more difficult to fathom than O-Chem II.

But if you believe the Gospel — that Jesus the Son of God dropped down into human history as a perfect sinless healing savior born of a virgin, absorbed the wrath you deserve for your sins on a dirty Roman cross, jumped out the grave like shark madness on Shark Week, and flew up to Heaven with a promise to come back with 100 million angels — then you have God’s Spirit living in you.  That’s no small thing.

So what does He do? What does this change?

Well you know.  Like everything.

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The awkward church moment when:



Your group starts freestyling and you have to let them finish, hesitant pauses and all.  The even more awkward moment when someone cusses or says something dirty.


Popular rhymes:

Jesus – diseases – healed us – Zacchaeus – Reese’s Pieces

Pharisee – heresy – woe to me – Laryn-Gee (As in, “You can’t speak, Pharisee / because you got Laryn-Gee – itis / you so unrighteous”)

Christian – listen – mission – wisdom – kingdom – forgiven – Peter Griffin

Elijah – ghost writer – Rhode Island (As in, “Elijah called down fire / a Heavenly ghost writer / who came out of nowhere / like Rhode Island”)


I love you anyway, church people.


Question: How A Praise Leader Can Focus On God While Leading

Youth Celebration Night, May 26th 2007

Anonymous asked:
quick question for you! so i read one of your blogs saying that you used to be a worship leader, i too am a worship leader and i kind of need your help/advice. when you lead worship, how did you focus on God? i try to, but it’s hard for me to focus on Him because i’m too busy concentrating on playing the piano or trying to match my tempo with the other band members, etc. help? thanks in advance!

I’m still learning here, but this is exactly one of the things I teach during praise practice and seminars.

First of all, practice the heck out of your instrument.  It’s not just to sound awesome (though that helps), but so you can get it down to second nature.  Unlike a regular old band, your last priority is chords and keys and tempo.  The better you know your music, the less you have to worry about it.  This will help with focusing on the most important priorities for praise.

Now the “focus” part: Most good praise songs will have two elements: Story and Imagery.  Inevitably this leads to Response.This is why the best praise songs read like the Book of Psalms — you’ll see Story, Imagery, and then David’s (or the psalm writer’s) Response.

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Quote: Control


God loves you and He’s in control. Otherwise we’re not talking about God. If God loved you but couldn’t control anything, then we should be worried. If God was in control but didn’t love you, then we should still be worried. But if God’s got this and He’s got you, there’s nothing to worry about.