“I’m telling you what The Village Church and Acts 29 need from me: It is my heart fully satisfied and alive in Jesus Christ, so I can be the courageous man that God has called me to be and lead with courage, knowing that I am going to be put, have been put, and will continue to be put in situations where I simply am not going to be able to win with half the crowd.”
“The group of men that I’ve done life deeply with for the last 15, 18 years, I want to make sure they’re being looped into what’s going on in my mind and heart.”
“I don’t feel the burden to defend myself against a guy on Twitter or a guy that emails in from South Carolina and has a five page manifesto against my ‘CRT woke-ism.’ But it’s a very different thing to shepherd the flock of God as we’ve been commanded to do.”
“There was a time last year it really kicked up. I think everybody was home, so everybody was online and, you know, stumbled into the same series of blogs. And then there was a book that came out that said some stuff. And so that, I just addressed it from the stage just head on. And I knew for some, this is going to provide clarity and win them back, and for others it won’t be enough. And they’ll head out and I’ll be OK with that.”
“Way too many of us have a real narrow, myopic view of the gospel…I think what’s necessary is a gospel that’s bigger than just individual salvation.”
“You can study Christian history and see where Christians have gotten very involved in issues of darkness and pushed them back and reestablished something closer to the heart of God, still imperfect, still in need of reform, but closer to the heart of God. I think everyone would agree that’s what happened in the 60s with the civil rights movement.”
“The government can’t solve what’s wrong here. They can’t legislate it. They can’t fix it no matter what side you’re on, because this is the primary issue. This is what’s most wrong. What’s most wrong is rebellion against God.”
“I’ve got dear friends right now, who I’m anxious about, who really have been caught up in some of these more social movements that are losing their grip on the atoning work of Jesus Christ.”
“I don’t want to call people to something that has no chance of success. I want to call them to what absolutely cannot fail, that one place where we can invest our time, energy and money that pays eternal dividends.”
“If there is kind of a sandy foundation [in a congregation], then I think the worst thing you could do is just launch into a ‘culture matters’ series where you’re just going to tackle, you know, hard things.”
“A pastor who’s serious about these things might want to think about those foundational issues as it relates to who God is, what God is like, then move into maybe anthropology, what is man, and lay that doctrinal foundation and use the social issues right now as the application to those truths about who God is, what God’s like, who man is, what man’s like, and not start with 12 weeks on race.”
