Leaving a large church in an affluent northern suburn of Tallahassee in order to be a part of a small midtown church plant has been a good thing for my family. Our past two years at CenterPoint have given us the opportunity to be a part of a formative Gospel community. Recently, however, I’ve noticed…

Recently I attended a meeting about the formation of a faith-based tutoring/mentoring program for our community. A part of the discussion revolved around the public school system’s insistance that nothing “religious” be a part of our interaction with the kids. In response to this, a good friend of mine said something that both startled and…

While spending this past weekend with my family in Keystone Heights, I was pulled aside by my cousin for a confession. “Mike, I’ve messed up, and I need your help” (not exactly the lite-family-catch-back-up level of conversation I was prepared for). Anyway, my cousin had been in trouble before, and I braced for a story…

It’s been a week now since we returned from Honduras, and I suppose the dust is beginning to settle. Not being able to make better sense of the trip or tell some amazing story of transformation is still bugging me a little. To make the whole “trip interpretation” even trickier is the fact that I’ve…

This August it’ll be time to consider the whole Honduras thing first hand. The plan is to stay for a week and work with the children of Ninos de la Luz in La Ceiba. Part of what our team will do is construction, the other part with be… playing soccer (or something like that). I’m…

I don’t really know that much about Marcion, but after reading about Moses and the Israelites (or would it be more clear to say Moses versus the Israelites) in the first five books of the Bible, I have to say that I can see why Marcion had questions about the Old Testament. Though I don’t…

The “nine to five” part of my life’s been pretty busy lately. Too busy. Maybe it’s related to my obsessive side, but when there’s a problem that I’m partly responsible to solve, I can’t just let it stay at the office. As a result, when I’m home I’m not all the way home – just…

An excerpt from “Following Jesus” by N.T. Wright: It is because of him that we know – we don’t just hope, we know – that God will wipe away all tears from all eyes. And in that knowledge we find ourselves to be Sunday people, called to live in a world of Fridays. In that…

Sell the house. Sell the cars. Sell the boat. Learn to speak Spanish. Build homes. Help physicians care for folks. Play guitar. Teach English. Fish. Play. Purge. In short, move to Honduras for two years. Can’t really say that I feel “called” to do this. Then again, I can’t really say that I’m not. It’s…

Before starting my day at the office, I usually read the latest entries on several design weblogs. This morning, an entry on the Stuff and Nonsense site caught my eye, and I thought I’d try to answer the question it posed – why do I do what I do? With that said, here are some…