Three Pitfalls for Young Evangelical Leaders

I’m young. I’m an evangelical. And I’m a leader (at least of my family, my church, and in some disconnected sense, to my small audience of readers). It’s exciting to be a leader, but it’s also sobering and carries many responsibilities. As I interact and read some of the work of the evangelicals in my […]

What We Really Should Be Teaching Our Kids

Last Thursday, during the Thanksgiving meal we hosted at our house, my son, Daniel Jr (age 4) had an epic meltdown over a superheros costume. My brother, Tim, was the recipient of much of this. After dealing with Daniel’s tantrum, we both went our way, sharing times with our family members, eating more pie, and […]

Celebrating 10 Great Years

Ten years ago, today, I held hands and looked into the eyes of a beautiful girl from Texas named Angela Sullivan.  I didn’t know much, but I knew I was in love with this girl. I fell in love with her beauty, her vivacious, sweet spirit, her love for the Lord and her zest for […]

Twenty Random Things I’m Thankful For in 2012

I love Thanksgiving. Here are twenty random things in no certain order that I’m thankful for: 1)     I’m thankful for Angela, my beautiful wife of ten years (tomorrow is my anniversary). I’m the luckiest man alive. But more on that tomorrow. 2)    I’m thankful for my four children, Grace, Daniel, Emma, Lily. Each is so […]

Shouldn’t Gratitude Should Be Our First Language?

Yeah, yeah, of course we’re supposed to be thankful on Thanksgiving. But it occurs to me that we’re not very good at this. By we, I don’t mean the editorial “we” by which I’m pointing the finger at the rest of Americans for being ungrateful while I ignore my own ingratitude. By we I don’t […]

The Gospel Versus Nostalgia

This summer I had the privilege of travelling to Eastern Europe to attend my brother’s wedding. His wife, Annette, is a native of Krakow, Poland. After the wedding, I continued on to Slovakia to visit missionaries we support near Bratislavia. Jason and Adele Rice and their three young boys have just got to the field […]

The Sin About Which No One Will Speak

Envy is like a fly that passes all the body’s sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores. – Arthur Chapman  There is a sin that nobody in our world really wants to discuss. It’s the fashionable sin, that fuels our great social movements and has become an engine of our politics. It’s the sin of […]

The Surprising Fruit of Balance

It would be hard to find a more boring word in ministry circles than “balance.” There is a lot of talk about being “radical”, “edgy”, “relevant”, etc. But balance sounds rather unhip. But I’m finding this word may be the key to lifelong, steady, sustained ministry success. There is a part of all of us […]