The Notebook

How many of you have done this to your kids, “Apologize to your brother/sister right now!” A forced apology is not an apology at all, is it? You can tell when an apology is not real and it does no good. Hypocrisy means pretending to be what one is not. In that sense, a hypocrite […]...

On October 15, 2006, fourteen people who made up the launch team for Bridge Church gathered in our basement to hold the first worship service of this new church. Exactly one year later on October 14, 2007, Bridge Church had 149 people attend our regular worship service! Although we didn’t launch u...

Remember the movie, The Sixth Sense. That was one of the better scary movies I had seen in awhile. The main line that stands out in the whole movie is when the little boy tells a psychologist, “I see dead people.” I see dead people, and I’m not joking about that one. I really do. […]...

This past weekend our family had the great opportunity to be commissioned as missionaries with the North American Mission Board in Atlanta. We met missionaries doing everything from church planting, inner city ministry, chaplains, collegiate ministry, to truck stop ministry. To hear the stories̷...

I have to give credit for this thought to my good friend Steve Sjogren. Through several conversations with Steve, we both agree that many Christians, leaders or not, suffer from Toxic-Callogy. Weird label I know, but what is really weird is that spell check doesn’t kick it out. There are peopl...

Well, I have to say, I am probably going to get phone calls and emails over this one. Today Bridge Church has two billboards going up in the area that say “We Apologize For…” with the web address, www.weapologizefor.com. Here is what this is all about: I grew up in a church that was good [...

Hopefully you have some very good friends that you share life together with. There are those who are special friends in your life and your existence would not be as rich if those people were not part of your journey. Being a pastor for the past fifteen plus years, I have had oodles of opportunities ...

We live in a world where everyone wants to be safe. Nothing wrong with that, it sure seems logical to me. The biggest danger we have, is encountering God. Too often, Christians merely have a “friendly relationship” with God (which is fine – we are called friends of God), but we also need a...

Some of you may remember(if you are over 40) the television commercial that Wendy’s Hamburgers ran in the 70’s with two little old ladies looking at a hamburger bun with a speck of meat on it and one of the ladies passionately asks, “Where’s the Beef?” Obviously, the commercial was a slam ...

Today at Bridge Church I am speaking on a discipline that has been lost in the church today… fasting. The church in general has gotten into the habit of not practicing on a regular basis the disciplines of communion and fasting. Over the years I did not make fasting a priority in my spiritual ...