“It is so much easier to sit in darkness than to gather enough wood for a fire.” “What is truth? If you take away the right to question you turn Christianity from a rushing mighty wind into a windowless room full of stale recycled air.”

I was asked to do a funeral for a homeless man’s brother. He is a great man, this guy James, he’s just been through some hard knocks and leaned on the wrong things. We’re not so far away from where he is at, not really. It’s just that our vices are more acceptable.

Some of my darkest days have been when I woke up with the knowledge that most of the things I believed and said I stood for were just concepts and theories that I was not actually living, and not only that I wasn’t living them, but that I hadn’t forged any avenues to apply them.

Pastoring gives the mental picture of a shepherd meandering through deep grass, near placid ponds under a powder blue sky. Truthfully, it feels more like trying to shepherd a flock of bumblebees. His rod and staff have been traded for a net and a smoke machine.
Today’s teens have such a wide fast-paced array of choices. [...]