Today marks the end of my ninth year of a very specific way of serving God, as a “called and ordained servant of the Word”. As year number 10 starts,  I look back to a weird moment when I felt the “inner call” of God to be a pastor. This “inner call” is a gut…

“Inside baseball” is a term that usually refers to a detail-oriented approach to the minutiae of a subject, which in turn requires such a specific knowledge about what is being discussed that the nuances are not understood or appreciated by outsiders. Hopefully this is a little easier to understand. This past week the Lutheran Church Missouri…

I’m all about the Gospel. I have the word “Gospel” literally tattooed to my right arm (I have “Law” on the left). But I’m just not sure that the average person on the street understands the word Gospel. If anything, they probably think I’m talking about one of the four accounts of Jesus’ life in…

In 1977, Iggy Pop released the classic song, “The Passenger”, a song that he says he wrote as he was riding Germany’s S-Bahn train, but also thinking of how he had been been driven around several countries for which he didn’t have a driver’s license. It’s not exactly a Psalm, or is it? The lyrics…

Today at the gym, a lady who usually takes the elliptical machine next to mine found a (hopefully unused) kleenex in one of the cubbie holes of the elliptical. She promptly took it out, and threw it on the floor, presumably for the employees of the gym to take care of later. On Monday, on…

What just popped into my mind was a troublesome memory from seventh grade. I was new to my school and was wondering where I fit in with everyone. One day in class, a note was stealthily passed to me. It read something to the effect of: “Tina says she likes you. Do you like her…

Diagnosing sin is pretty easy. It’s all around us. We don’t have to look very far. One diagnostic tool that I’ve used to find sin in myself and my surroundings has been the “I wish . . .” tool. I just sit there and wish. After all, a wish is just an acknowledgement of some…

There’s a new TV show that is coming out on AMC, the same folks who brought you Mad Men and the Walking Dead. Except this time the story line isn’t about advertising executives or living in a post apocalyptic zombie infested world. Instead, it’s about a guy with a past who takes over his father’s…

At lunch last week, after last week’s newsletter, a good friend told me that I let myself dwell too much upon my sinful and broken nature. This good friend reminded me that what Jesus Christ has done for me has, indeed, made me a new creation. It was Gospel. It was Gospel that was tough…

A little over a year ago, we started rebranding our Wednesday night gathering – starting to call it “ACCESS” instead of the old “+Vespers+” name that we had been using. This name change came out of some investigations over the past couple of years about our campus ministry. We started asking questions about the challenges…