Sunday is the day for church, right? We work on the weekdays, sleep in and get a few chores done around the house on Saturday, and then Sunday we get up and go to church. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Well, in our culture today this is often how we treat church. We see church as simply being in a certain place at a certain time. We see church as a place we attend, whether online or in-person. Church has become a checklist item or part of our to-do list, whether we like to admit it or not. We have made church something it was not meant to be—just a place. The Church was never meant to be ..read more

What comes to mind for you when you think about Easter? I know for me, if I am honest, the traditions of Easter sometimes come to mind quicker than the true and profound meaning behind Easter. He is risen! Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is crucial to our faith. Easter marks a moment that changed everything for the believer! Jesus Christ not only lived a perfect life and died for our sins, but HE ROSE FROM THE GRAVE! He conquered the hold of death for all those who follow Him! Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me ..read more

A friend of ours from the UK, Pete, was recently in town to share with our church about his church-planting work in Manchester, England. Pete told us about the challenges he faces living in and ministering to a post-Christian culture. Post-Christianity is a reality where Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society, and its people have gradually assumed secular values, culture, and worldviews. He shared the encouragement that this culture allows him to minister to people who have no concept of Christianity—whether positive or negative, genuine or hypocritical. With this r ..read more

There is a distorted cultural reality that states that the more visible a person is in the public eye, the more we often feel the freedom to evaluate and criticize them. I likewise find myself thinking in a moment of my own disapproval of a public figure of any kind, “Well, if you didn’t want me to form an opinion about you, maybe you shouldn’t have sought the spotlight.” The reality is that this thought is sinful, and I wanted to start off these thoughts that I’m sharing with you by confessing them to you and before the Lord. I begin with that thought because we are just days away from our co ..read more

Men—what comes to mind when you hear the phrase “act like a man”? Maybe it teleports you back to the baseball diamond and the harshness of your dad’s voice after missing that third pitch. Or maybe it’s what runs through your mind in the middle of the night as you ruminate about that big mistake you made in the meeting yesterday. We all aspire to a certain vision of manhood, but most of us feel like we constantly come up short. No doubt, part of the problem is that we’re sinful, broken men stumbling our way towards holiness. But what if it’s also that we don’t actually have a real vision of wha ..read more

On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us. – Psalm 62:7–8 (ESV)   When it comes to spending time with the Lord, I struggle with prayer the most. I don’t know how many of you struggle like I do, but I will find myself in the middle of praying for something, and at some point, I am thinking about something completely different and fail to finish speaking to the Lord. My mind begins to wander about tasks that I need to accomplish, people I need to follow up with… real ..read more

Over the course of our American history, leaders (and their constituencies) have deemed it necessary to set aside particular days to be observed or remembered. While this practice is in no way novel to our republic, it does express its uniqueness in the ideas and people we have decided to celebrate. Within the church, it is never our desire to deify person or deed outside of the person and work of Christ as the manifested representative of the Triune God. In taking a look at Holidays at SBC, it is instead our hope that we might ask the question, How might we observe today with, as Paul puts it ..read more

I love the Christmas season. It’s a time when joy seems to fill the air—smiling faces, twinkling lights, and heartwarming commercials. But what happens when our internal world doesn’t match up to all this joy surrounding us? Maybe this past year you or someone you know received a terrible diagnosis, lost a loved one, or experienced the devastation of a child’s relapse. These things don’t quite fit the “mold” of Christmas. However, despite feeling these hurts, it’s common to conceal our pain during seasons like this. I experienced a taste of this a few months back. I remember it was the we ..read more

Overcoming negativity…it’s not something we often talk about. And it’s a difficult concept to fight when we live in a world that is inundated with all kinds of negative messages. News from our government comes with negative undertones in the form of political backstabbing. Social media provides a plethora of negative messages in the form of comparison and inadequacy. And the negative reports about world events can be overwhelmingly depressing. Couple that with the negative messages that come from our own thought life, such as “not measuring up or not fitting in,” and it all can begin to take a ..read more

Be still, and know that I am God. – Psalm 46:10a In 2023, one thing that seems hard for any of us to be, is still. We just can’t be still. There’s always something to do. In fact, it’s probably hard for some of you to finish reading this sentence, let alone this blog post, because you’re ready to move on to something else (I’m going as fast as I can, trust me!). It seems like I always have a chore to do, always an important task, always a really important call to make or a high priority email to return. And when we run into a problem, it seems like we have to solve it. And not just solve it, b ..read more