I am the oldest of 12 children, and I have 7 brothers.
It has been 7 years since I last lived in my parents’ home, and I now have a family and a house of my own.
As with almost every home with children, bedrooms become messy and need cleaning at my home. It’s not unusual for parents to tell a child to clean his room.
Language is like humans. It lives, it breathes, it changes, and it dies. Unlike God who never changes, language is subjective and means different things to different people.
Unfortunately, within the church and in Christian circles, language is no more objective than it is outside of Christianity.
I mean, what did I even just say? What is the meaning of church, and what is a Christian? I know what I meant, but you may completely misunderstand what I meant because you might define those words differently than I did.
In 2015 I started getting into the habit of traveling a lot. While doing an internship in Omaha, I still had to take seminary classes in Ankeny, IA, so I estimate that I made about 40 of those 5-hour round trips that year. God also provided opportunities that year to go on a family vacation in Washington and Oregon, an orchestra tour in Minnesota, a short soccer tournament trip in Florida, and a ministry trip in the San Francisco Bay area.
I love how Hebrews 12 begins: “Seeing then that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” In the context the author is urging his readers to live in faith, following the example of the many men and women of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11.
As I begin my church planting internship and anticipate many years of church planting ministry in the years to come, I love every opportunity I have to interact with the church planters who have gone before me.
The plane began its descent on American soil, and shortly before 6am EST we were on the ground in Atlanta.
A new day, a new month, a new city…and a new perspective.
My ministry trip to Brasil is over, but life continues on. I could not just come back the same person that I was when I went there. But I’ll talk about that later.