A friend posted on facebook this week a video of a young man singing his heart out on an Interstate in southern California. His windows and sun roof or wide open, and he chimes happily along with a song spilling loud from his car. “Fill me up, Buttercup,” he shouts for all to hear, bobbing and weaving to the beat. Traffic is thick, so drivers and passengers to the right and left take notice. He invites them to sing with him. Many do. It’s brilliant. It’s a little outbreak of

Last week in Toronto, speaking at The Peoples Church, I had a heart-altering experience. I was speaking from the passage in John 5 where Jesus asks a man who has been “an invalid for thirty-eight years” if he wants to get well. The man doesn’t leap at the opportunity. Essentially, he whines. Jesus heals him anyhow. One of the puzzles of this story is, Why only one? John says that there was a “great multitude of disabled people – the blind, the lame, the paralyzed” lying abou

I was describing recently our church’s outreach ministries to a pastor friend of mine. He asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “What percentage of your congregation understands the ‘principalities and powers’ nature of this ministry and pray accordingly?” I’ll tell you my answer below. But first, what’s he talking about, “principalities and powers”? It’s a reference to Ephesians 6:10-20. There, Paul calls every Christian to put on the “full armor of God.” And he

I had a funny idea (it happens every so often): to preach a sermon series called Against the dwarfs (as a sequel to our church’s current series, Against the gods). It would be 7 sermons that take the dominant trait of each of Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs – Sneezy, Sleepy, Dopey, Happy, Grumpy, Bashful, Doc – and explore how that trait represents something amiss in our culture: our slavish dependence on the pharmaceutical-medical complex (Doc), or our chronic apathy (Sleepy), or

This Sunday is the 10tb anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York’s Twin Towers. Iconic photos of smoke and fire billowing from those glittering buildings are indelibly stamped in most our heads. Our sadness and sense of vulnerability remains close to the bone. This Sunday is the 28th anniversary of the incorporation of the church I pastor. Twenty-eight years ago, a small band of faithful Christ-followers signed a deed that established New Life Community Baptist. We di