I had to exercise some serious self-control when I came out of my office on Saturday, the day before Easter, and found that my iPad had been delivered. My message was no where near finished and I knew that if I opened the box it would probably stay that way. So, for the rest of the day it sat next to my espresso machine, casting longing eyes at me whenever I made a coffee. It wasn’t easy, but I did not give in to the siren call of technology until I had wrestled my message to the ground and then I was able to enjoy opening it up.

In all seriousness, the iPad is a great tool, and having preached from it this weekend it fully delivered everything that was lacking from the Kindle DX in the pulpit. (see my previous post on that here) And I love that first thing I ever did with it was preach on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ! I believe that technology exists for the glory of God and we should harness it to make Jesus famous, however we can. (more…)

In the last nine months I have preached approximately one hundred and forty-four times and for all but one of them I spoke using Amazon’s Kindle DX for my message notes. The one time I didn’t was a fluke, the screen on my Kindle broke and Amazon had a new one (for free I might add) to me in 24 hours, but I actually had to speak at Skull Church using paper notes one night. I totally felt like a cave man.

I have been meaning to blog about the pros/cons of the Kindle for public speaking for a while. I regularly get emails from other communicators who have seen me using it and are wondering: whether I like it and is it hard to get used to? and which size they should get? and how to get their word docs onto it et cetera. So here goes… (more…)

We are having a night of worship at Skull Church tonight, intentionally carving out time to stop and praise God for who He is and the great things He has done at this outreach service. There is no doubt about it, we are experiencing a revival. Hundreds of people have responded to God’s Holy Spirit and made professions of faith in Christ at Skull Church since it began. It is special, exhilarating, breathtaking and delightful to watch people humble themselves, admit their sins and come to Christ that they might find life. It is also addicting, and it makes you want to see it happen again and again.

In the midst of this a verse that has been on my heart is Psalm 85:6 which says, Will You not revive us again, That Your people may rejoice in You? And rather than just being content that we are seeing God move, my heart longs for Him to do more. To revive us again. To ignite a blazing passion in our hearts for Him, for holiness, and for those who are lost. (hopefully one even greater than our passion for the other LOST!) We decided to take a night and set it aside to specifically pray for this to happen. A night to celebrate our great God and pray for Him to take us further up and further in. For Him to purify our hearts and rock our worlds. That night is tonight, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Skull Church is an unapologetically evangelistic service. The reason it exists is so people who don’t know Christ can be invited to hear killer music and the gospel message. At every service there is an invitation for people to publicly respond to the gospel and give their lives to Christ. But for tonight, instead of focusing on inviting someone who is unsaved, we told everyone to come asking for God to (re)ignite their heart with a holy passion. We invited everyone to join us in a day of fasting and prayer today leading up to the service. Starting at 7 this morning we have been guiding the days focus through hourly tweets/fb updates (ranging from prayers of thanksgiving to confession to prayers for our city, for Haiti and so on.) And because our love for God should always work it’s way out to love for others we asked everyone to come to the service tonight with either a package of toilet paper or a cleaning product, items requested by a local homeless shelter.

It has been a clarifying and special day so far and I can’t wait to come together at Skull Church tonight with everyone and lift our voices and hearts to God together. We will be asking God to make Jesus famous in our lives, and that people would continue to come to know Christ at Skull Church as they are invited by friends, coworkers, and family members–both in person and on the radio/website. We are praying for Him to do even greater things in this city than we have seen Him do in the past.

Next week, hopefully with our hearts ablaze, our focus returns to evangelism and we are so excited to have Greg Laurie coming to speak at Skull Church, for the first time ever. Stoked!

Please join with us in prayer as we paddle to catch a fresh wave of God’s Holy Spirit.

In Colossians 3 Paul describes the new clothes that we are to wear as new creatures in Christ. The old rags of sin and lust and flesh are to be put off and instead we are to daily be clothed in the righteousness of Christ. He gives a list of our new duds in vs. 12-14 and included is something called tender mercies–I dig the King James which simply says, “put on bowels of mercies.” This seems strange to us because we connect love with the heart but the Hebrews identified emotions with the part of the body where they are actually felt–in the abdomen. (Highly charged emotions trigger sensations in the pit of our stomachs.) What Paul is saying is that we should live in relation to the suffering of those around us with sympathy and compassion, and we should allow those emotions to move us to action.

Living green and doing philanthropic relief work today is mainstream (as it should be) even trendy, but it was extremely countercultural at the time when Paul fired off this old school e-mail to the Christians in Colossae. Commenting on this verse R. Kent Hughes said, “The ancient world, apart from Biblical revelation, was merciless. The maimed and sickly and aged were discarded: the mentally ill were subjected to inhumanities. But Christianity brought compassion, and it still does. The gospel brings with it sympathy and tenderness of heart. That is one of its great glories!”

This truth came to life this past week as the earthquake that devastated Haiti made us sick to our stomachs with God-given compassion. It has been so heartbreaking to see the pictures and stories coming from what is already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. There is no way I can even fathom what they are experiencing. And yet I have been so inspired to see God’s people mobilize and respond to the pain. The next day after the earthquake I felt lead to take up an offering at Skull Church to support the BGEA rapid response teams that were already en route with relief materials and chaplains who would bring the gospel and I was blown away by the generosity that was shown that night.

I have also been super blessed by the way James McDonald and Mark Driscoll have been trying to rally the church in America to specifically help the church in Haiti rebuild. They launched a website called, churcheshelpingchurches.com and the Lord opened doors for them to go down there personally this week (I have been following their trip on twitter here and here and they are on their way home now)  Mark described it as being in hell. They took a film and photography team with them so that they can show us how critical it is that we help our brothers and sisters in Haiti out.  I love what they are doing and encourage you to check it out and pray about supporting this ministry.

Three years ago today on a (very) cold Sunday morning we held the very first fresh life church service. Fourteen people met in a small store-front space for worship and a Bible study and we had no idea what kind of adventure we were in for.

Three years later as I type it is quite honestly hard to believe all the Lord has done in that time. The church has expanded into two theaters, and skull church, fresh life groups & fresh life radio have all given the ministry turbo boosts. We have been delighted to watch Christ rock many people’s lives for eternity.

There has been laughter, adrenaline, fear, excitement, criticism, sleepless nights, mistakes, failures and victories. Technology has been utilized in new and exciting ways–I have even mastered the art of being in two places at once (by pre-recording messages when I have to be out of town but dont want to put a series on hold.) Many different books of the Bible have been taught through.And once, while preaching, I fell down and almost hit my head on a water table while pretending to open a rootbeer. A lot of coffee has been consumed. One thing is for sure–there hasn’t been a dull moment. This church plant has felt a lot like skiing in front of an avalanche. Watching Christ keep His promise to build HIS church has been the thrill of my life. I am humbled by and grateful for the opportunity to serve Christ at this church.

I want to congratulate my wife, family and team at this mile-marker and thank them for the blood sweat and tears that have been poured into this work. I get to serve the Lord with the most amazing people on the planet and am so thankful for their love of Christ, passion for the gospel, creativity, loyalty and ingenuity. You guys are killer, and remember, the best is yet to come!

To God be the glory for the great things He has done!