It’s no secret the Church is struggling to reach young people. With each generation there are less and less people who identify with a particular religious tradition, including Christianity. The fastest growing group in survey after survey are those who identify as “spiritual but not religious”. As one who has found faith to be a …
The Front Porch May 26, 2022
For every time there is a season. So writes the author of the book of Ecclesiastes in Chapter 3. Part of God’s great design to this earth is seasons. We experience wet and dry seasons, we experience the four seasons of the year, we experience planting seasons and harvesting seasons. In all these seasons we …
The Front Porch April 28, 2022
Someone said to me following the shared Easter service with City Church, “I wish every Sunday was Easter.” Indeed, it was wonderful to have a full sanctuary for the first time in over two years. It was also wonderful to share in the baptisms of three adults who have reoriented their lives in response to …
The Front Porch March 24, 2022
“Suffering is the refining fire of theology.” I read that last week in a reflection on the war in Ukraine. The day after I read it we began hearing about a missile attack on a theatre that housed hundreds of people who had fled from their homes, many of them mothers and children. The numbers …
The Front Porch March 10, 2022
I served as a youth director while in college. It was on-the-job training since I had never been a part of a youth group growing up and I had never worked with young teenagers. I remember trying to lead the kids in a bible study one night and inviting them to share one of their …
The Front Porch February 24, 2022
We begin the season of Lent next week with Ash Wednesday. I grew up in a tradition (Roman Catholic) that commemorated Ash Wednesday with a special service where everyone was marked with ashes…quite literally. The ashes were made by burning the palm branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday and then the ashes were mixed …
The Front Porch January 27, 2022
In 2004 Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ made its debut in movie theatres. Churches were given advanced copies of the film to share with their congregations. We partnered with Torrey Pines Christian Church to watch the film together on a Friday night so we could engage in a group discussion following the film. …
The Front Porch January 13, 2022
So often we refer to the Lord’s Prayer as the prayer that begins “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” In fact, we pray that prayer together every Sunday as a part of our worship service. It was the prayer that Jesus gave his disciples in Matthew 6 in response to their …