God is not a tool in our hands. He does not exist to serve our goals, our metrics, or our platforms.
The gospel isn’t for the strong but people who know they aren’t.
One great thing about our post-denominational age is that it has opened up opportunities to make common cause with other Lutherans who, despite their differences and eccentricities, can agree on some of the most important things.

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Perhaps the answer to creating a healthier church and a more invested people is found in preaching more clearly the full freeing Gospel.
What do you think of when you hear the term “self-esteem”?
It’s by no means an ivory-tower theological question. It’s as real as the weight we’ve lost from the stress of our divorce. As real as the bottle of antidepressants on our nightstand. We believe in him. We love him. But every voice inside us and every shred of evidence outside us points to his abandonment of us in our hour of deepest need.
The devil isn’t a popular subject nowadays. The argument is made that we’ve progressed as a culture.
The biblical response to suffering, to recognizing that things are not as they ought to be, is lament.
In the last two decades U.S. Americans have given way to fear of many things: economic decline, loss of values, limits on our personal rights, to name a few. Too many of us live with some sense of threat and menace hanging over our heads and haunting our hearts.
It is only when individuals are bound together in community that they become fully human.
I am often haunted by my past. I am daily haunted by what I should be doing.
Jesus’ forgiveness will not collapse. Jesus’ forgiveness will take us places our legs can’t take us.
Good communication depends on trust to make such conversation work effectively. The truth springs, first, from God's own promise and the punch put into that promise by the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit.
Here is a lament I’ve written especially for victims of hurricanes. May it be for you, for your family, or for your church, a way to put into prayer the anguish of your souls.
She said, “Keep coming back, and you’ll know joy.” He wanted to vomit a rainbow of resentment, bitterness, and loathing all over her faux-leather boots.