For most of my life, I never thought having a multiracial church mattered. I also thought racism didn’t really exist anymore. Slavery was over. Don’t use the “N word”, be nice to black people and racism is eliminated. As a rough summary, this is what a lot of white Christians think about race. If asked […]
For When I Want to Be a Christian Celebrity
I officiated a wedding this weekend and was reminded of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was essentially the Christian rock star of the 1st century: huge crowds followed him, everyone retweeted him, and he was on the New York Times best seller list every time he wrote a book. In fact, there were murmurs […]
A Solution to the Bible vs Gay Community gay marriage debate
I am a pastor. For better or for worse, our culture has decided that pastors officiate weddings. Not librarians, not mailmen, not mayors, not IRS-agents. This is cool with me inasmuch as the Bible does talk about marriage as something God created with a certain purpose behind it. So when people want to follow the […]
Don’t fight sexual sin alone. Share your struggle.
One of Satan’s biggest lies when it comes to sexual temptation is that we’re the only one who struggles with it. If we were to share our struggles with trusted Christian friends their mouths would surely drop, gasping in disbelief and disgust at our dirty sin. So we keep our struggle bottled up in shame, […]
Positioning White Privilege to Where We Actually Can Talk About it
When we hear the word “racist,” we think of KKK members, the “N-word”, or the recent comments made by Clippers owner Donald Sterling. A racist is someone who doesn’t like people of other races. Typically in America it has been seen as a white person who doesn’t like black people. When the topic of white […]
Why do we talk about race at our church?
I never heard a sermon that referenced race while growing up in church. What does race have to do with people coming to know Jesus, anyway? Or what does it have to do with the Bible? When I talk about race in sermons at Crossroads, I think these are thoughts that go through the minds […]