Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” ~ John 14:6 Over the course of my life, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an interpretation of these words spoken by Jesus as anything other than a doctrinal argument. And while…

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion — without transposing the enemy from the sphere of the monstrous……

Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending ~ Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Yesterday morning Kim chose to stay home with our youngest two, in order to wipe the flow from their noses in the privacy of our home, so our eldest two and I headed off to worship with the feel of a “daddy daughter date.” By 10:15 we were seated in the nether-regions of our congregation (I…

Yesterday around 4:00PM I was hit by an afternoon crash, so I decided to head down to the corner convenient store for a refill of my favorite caffeinated beverage. Standing in the check-out line, I experienced an interaction between two people that awoke me in a more acute way than the chemicals in my cup…

“There was a time when the church was very powerful-in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of…

Honduras Water Project 2006 from Mike Houghton on Vimeo. It’s 7:00 AM as I sit to write this letter. I’ve taken a hot shower, shaved, and brewed a pot of coffee. It’s a normal morning with one exception: without the gift of water none of these things would be possible. To be honest, I don’t…

“The Christian life begins as a community that is gathered at the place of impossibility, the tomb.” – Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

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…