Scripture of the Week: "Whenever anyone asks you to speak of your hope, be ready to defend it." - 1 Peter 3:15b Hello, A couple days ago, our church staff had a staff development day. We took a tour of downtown Houston, we ate lunch together. We walked through Discovery Green, and then Annunciation Catholic [...]
Scripture of the Week: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." - John 1:5 Hello, Thank you to everyone who attended the State of the Church or has watched it online. At the end of the meeting, we asked folks to let us know if there was a certain [...]
Scripture of the Week: "My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth." - Psalm 121:2 Hello, There is an optimism that comes from being a Christian. After all, we believe that resurrection follows death, that God brings beauty from ashes, and that God is waymaker who can do the impossible! However, [...]
Hello, I came across the wackiest Scripture this week. Ezekiel isn't the easiest book of the Bible, pretty doom and gloom sometimes. And in chapter 9, it says that in a vision, Ezekiel hears God tell an angel to go throughout the city of Jerusalem, and mark the foreheads of all the people in the [...]
Hello, Image On Monday evening, a few of us went to a worship night and prayer gathering here in downtown called Urban Hymnal. It was on a Monday night. Folks had to pay $10 for parking. And there were over 200 young people from all over the city gathered to worship. There were no chairs, [...]
Hello, Please join me in lifting a prayer for Iglesia Generaciones, which begins its weekly worship services at our West Campus this Sunday. Image Yesterday morning I was thinking about that verse from Psalm 23, "Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." (Psalm 23:4b). The rod was used for protection, it was a weapon [...]
On Monday, I attended an event for area clergy at the Holocaust Museum. We were talking about the voices for human rights in our city, and the challenges of civil discourse in the age of social media. The new executive director spoke of Abraham, recognized as the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and shared [...]
I'm loving getting to meet with people and hear the longings people have for our church. One of the things people have asked repeatedly is about the possibility of using the word "United" in our church logo and digital media again. We had a fruitful conversation about that at our Administrative Board meeting this past [...]
Organizational health experts talk about something called "change fatigue". A person, or an organization, endures so much change over a period of time that they kind of reach their upper limit, and after that, every change, even good ones, feel like too much. I try to be aware of when I'm feeling change fatigue. Sometimes, [...]
This morning in my devotional reading, I came across an intriguing verse. The author of Colossians writes, “I work hard and struggle for this goal with his energy, which works in me powerfully.” (Colossians 1:29) Summoning up bursts of energy day after day like the Energizer Bunny, trying to keep all the plates spinning, gets [...]
