I inherited the name of our church when I started here fifteen years ago and I’ve never loved it. It’s better, in my opinion, than the original name—Waterville Open Bible Church—or something even stra...  Read More

I remember years ago while on a road trip I passed one of those billboards with a message from God on it. Have you seen those? This particular one said, “Don’t make me come down there.” ...  Read More

The longer I follow Jesus and try to help others do the same the more I’m convinced everything comes down to desire. What do you want? Now, I believe the ultimate answer to that question is the same...  Read More

“The Lord has given me a strong warning not to think like everyone else does.” – Isaiah 8:11 The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is supposed to change our perceptual reality. That first Eas...  Read More

I’ve always struggled with “the Fall;” the doctrine that the first humans were created to live in perfect union with God but chose instead to disobey, sentencing all future humanity to an estranged re...  Read More

The Psalmist declares, “You are good and do only good” (Ps 119:68a). Now, in his context, God doing good was probably measured by things like securing him victory in battle or protecting him against ...  Read More

St. Ambrose once referred to the Psalter as the “gymnasium for the soul,” the place where spiritual athletes go to “work out” their inner worlds. That is because every Psalm is an example of the Psalm...  Read More

I’m currently leading a Formation Group[1] at our church I’m calling Practicing the Way, a title I stole from John Mark Comer’s book Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus; Become like him; Do as he did.[2...  Read More

I’ve been processing this idea for a while but felt like it was finally time to put something down in writing. I’m currently meeting with several young couples for pre-marital counseling while at the...  Read More

In my sermon this week I spoke about a phenomenon called self-enhancement, the tendency we all have to think more highly of ourselves than our performance merits. This is also called the Dunning-Krug...  Read More

This Sunday I gave a sermon about how Jesus’ parables challenged (and still challenge) conventional beliefs about God. The people to whom Jesus first came were not prepared for him in large part becau...  Read More

Jesus told stories called parables to help mostly uneducated people grasp easily misunderstood spiritual topics. For this reason, Jesus’ stories were simple. They involved common, directly accessible,...  Read More