My hope is to write 24 poems in 2024. I am sure they will have varying degrees of quality and connectivity.This first poem was occasioned by my 45th birthday and is actually an update of something I wrote in 2020.

It is called … The Man.

Next time you are feeling overwhelmed by the leadership role and responsibility that God has given you in the church, and next time you aren’t sure about what it is that God has called you to do in that role, it might be helpful to remember this simple image. In and amongst the many complexities of leadership lies the simplicity of a picture of those who were faithful enough to stand firm in the middle of a river.

Stand in the Jordan, and enjoy watching the tumultuous work of God.

Four unbelievably easy things I do to maintain pastoral connectivity and availability even - and especially - in the midst of very busy, and very large, ministry environments. I am painfully aware that these sound small, obvious, and perhaps even pitiable, and that none of them would be necessary in a smaller church (a blog topic for another day) but they have all been really effective tools that have helped me and the people I serve as we seek to walk this life of Jesus following AMONG one another.

Different people might need different approaches at different seasons in their lives. One thing they all need is patience.

Patience is grace applied over time.
We all need that.

I read somewhere recently that true friendship is like a sacrament of sorts, and I think I agree with that. Friendship, well practiced, is a spiritually formative reminder of the love and grace of Christ manifested in and through the loving presence, patience, and pursuit of His image bearers. One can’t help but feel the presence of Christ when a friends shows you grace at your least lovable. It is a very Christ-like thing to do. It has happened to me many times and continues to happen to me in the life of the church that I get to be part of today.  

How can we take back our lives from a reactive world of chaos? How do we skillfully sail amidst the raging waves of our daily schedule and demands? How do we summon the strength to keep going when so many of us are on the edge of burnout?

All too often we have embraced the power grabs of culture as the way to be heard, but as I look at the life and teachings of Jesus and as I study the remarkable instructions given to the church in the New Testament, I see a people who are called to live lives of beautiful protest, people who resist the systems of the day by showing the beauty of another way.

As we poured out into the Manhattan streets I saw the potential of tens of thousands of people who had been reminded that the status quo isn’t good enough for a lot of people in the world. Discontent can function as a seed of awakening in a society, and I could feel the fruit of that awakening growing inside of me through an evening of discontented reminder. Imagine if we could channel that sort of discontent into churches and communities in a way that made us respond not in the sin of anarchy but in the love of the Kingdom of God. Imagine if we took the time to hammer our rage on the anvil of love until it turned into a tool useful for human flourishing?

What a wonderfully confounding thing it is to be a person. We are all a complex mix of image-bearing potential for good and serpent-believing potential for wickedness, and our recognition of this tension ought to make us the most humble and yet most hopeful of all creatures.

The early reviews were gushing, ready to anoint Taylor not just as a queen of pop but as a decent candidate for the UK’s next Prime Minister. But then, as a few days passed, the curmudgeons emerged from the dark wood paneled writing pits they inhabit with critiques so vociferous, so grumpy and so personal that you would swear that Ms Swift murdered one of their children with one of the many synthesizers that she wields on this record.

Welcome to The Resident Aliens! A place of content creation and collation from a pastor who isn’t from around here.

How many of us know this story as the story of the immoral woman? I did too for many years, and there is some reasoning for that, but as I have studied it afresh, I really think we have flattened out the woman and inserted her into our context and largely ignored her own. We paint her as a flirtatious, immoral woman who refuses to settle down. She has chewed through five marriages and is now shacking up with her new boyfriend. That is how many have portrayed her, but I don’t think it is possible.

I am an introvert with a call on my life to surround myself with people. Here are some things I have learned about how to do that well.