With the second national political convention in progress, everyone knows it’s election season in the United States (though I often wonder if “election season” ever truly ends). It is likely that either the Democratic nominee or the Republican nominee will win, though the Libertarian nominee could win, too (hey, it’s 2020). Once again we’re being…

Over a year ago I had the realization that many of my prayers for New City Church were rather small. I was challenged to pray bigger prayers. Too often I limit God by my own limited imagination. I shared this challenge with the Council of Elders and we came up with a list of several…

Though Paul had planted the church in Corinth, having preached the gospel in that city and seeing God bring many men and women to faith in Jesus, his bona fides as an apostle seemed to be always questioned by the Corinthian believers. In each of his letters to this church he defended his role—and authority—as…

If you wrote a loved one a letter—let me stop there for a moment. A letter is a bit like a text or a post on social media, but with literal paper and ink, and generally only read by the person to whom it is written, and you send it through the mail, which takes…

I recently saw a comment online that gave me pause. The claim was that unless a preacher loves to spend hours and hours studying Scripture, he’s not really preaching, but is putting on a show. There is certainly some measure of truth to this claim. There are those for whom preaching is self-centered. Some desire…