And the church is not a corporate brand created for our consumption. It is a calling that consumes us.

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That can be hard to hear. We spend much of our lives choosing things based on what they do for us. We read reviews before buying a device. We cancel subscriptions we no longer use. Finding something that meets our needs is usually considered good judgment.

We bring those habits to church, too. We like the preaching at one place, but another has more for the kids. Somewhere else feels more like us. Before long, we are evaluating a congregation much as we would anything else we might spend a Sunday morning doing.

I understand that. Choosing a church matters, especially when children are involved. Some congregations are unhealthy, and staying in one doesn't prove faithfulness. But even in a healthy church, belonging will eventually require something that being a satisfied customer does not.

Other people will disappoint us. A decision will go in a direction we would not have chosen. Someone will need more from us than we feel like giving. At that point, we begin to discover whether we have joined a people or simply found a place we enjoy.

The New Testament describes a belonging we cannot manage entirely on our own terms. Paul calls the church a body. Jesus called us a bunch of branches (He is the Vine). We are joined to Christ, which also joins us to people we might never have picked for ourselves.

I find that both beautiful and inconvenient.

It means someone else’s grief can interrupt my plans. Forgiveness becomes something I have to practice with an actual person, sometimes while I still think I am right. Being known means allowing someone close enough to notice the distance between who I claim to be and how I live.

No church program can do that work for us.

Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him. “Come and die” would be a tough sell on a church billboard, but we cannot leave it out of the invitation. Following him costs us some of the control we would prefer to keep. We learn to let go of having our way, including how we want to be seen.

We also discover that the life he gives us is worth more than the one we were so determined to protect.

That is why I keep coming back to repentance. We can recognize everything wrong with the church as a product and still try to solve it by producing something better. I can preach against consumption while quietly hoping people will admire how well I preached against it.

Pastors are in this, too. I am in this.

We have sometimes gathered crowds without giving enough attention to the people those crowds are becoming. We have taught congregations to expect constant production, then grown resentful when they expect us to keep producing. And some of what we call ministry ambition is our own need to feel successful.

We need to tell the truth about that before we ask the congregation to change.

Those of us in the pews have our own truth to face. Showing up matters, but attendance alone does not make us available to one another. We can want a close church family while keeping everyone at a comfortable distance. We can applaud a church’s commitment to serving its neighbors and assume the staff will handle it.

Repentance gets personal when we stop discussing what “the church” ought to do and acknowledge our own part in its life.

Nobody gets to stand outside this problem and grade everyone else. Every congregation includes people who are still learning to follow Jesus. There is grace for that. There is also a responsibility to keep learning.

And we can do that without treating the church across town as a threat.

Different congregations have different histories and callings. Those differences can be gifts. Another church doing good work in our community gives us something to be grateful for. Their growth does not diminish our faithfulness. God also doesn’t bless one church by punishing another.

The people were never ours to begin with. Christ is the head of the church, and that ought to loosen our grip considerably.

After eight posts about the church’s branding problem, I hope it is clear that I am concerned with the life behind the image. A congregation can have a beautiful website and still teach people that they are mostly there to watch. A pastor can build an impressive platform while becoming increasingly unavailable to the people nearby.

Eventually, our actual lives tell the story.

I want us to pay attention to that story. A person who is learning to forgive is evidence of something worth celebrating. So is a congregation that can face a difficult truth without turning on one another. When someone notices a neighbor’s need and makes room to help, the faith we profess has taken on flesh.

Much of this will never make it into a promotional video. It happens over time, often unnoticed, among people who keep letting Jesus work in them.

The disciples are the brand. That includes how we behave when we are tired, how we handle disagreement, and whether people see us as willing to love them when it costs us something.

I am writing this because I love the church. I have given much of my life to it, and I still believe we can learn to live together in ways that make Jesus' goodness visible.

But we will have to participate. We cannot outsource following Jesus to the people we pay or expect a Sunday service to carry the whole weight of our faith.

The church is a calling that reaches into the rest of our lives. Following Jesus together will ask more of us than we expected.

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Maybe it’s a sermon series or a new ministry. We might revisit our values, rethink discipleship, or change our staff and leadership structures. Having a plan can be reassuring, especially when we’re not entirely sure what the problem is. At least we’re doing something.

But I wonder if our instinct to fix things has become part of what needs fixing.

We’ve spent years teaching people, often without intending to, that church is something they attend and consume. It’s silly to assume that we can undo that by offering a better product. And if we’ve made pastors into religious producers, asking them to produce more resources about authentic Christian community seems like a strange way forward.

I think we need to repent.

I realize that’s a loaded word, particularly for those of us who grew up in churches where repentance was mostly associated with guilt, fear, and altar calls. But repentance is a gift. It is the grace of being able to tell the truth about ourselves and, by God’s mercy, turn in another direction.

And we need to tell quite a bit of truth.

As a pastor, I have to ask myself why growth matters so much to me. I believe deeply that people matter to God, and I want our church to grow because of that. But I also know there’s something in me that enjoys the affirmation of a growing congregation. Those motives aren’t always easy to separate. I’ve felt the disappointment of a poorly attended Sunday and the satisfaction of a full room. I’d like to believe those feelings are entirely about the kingdom of God, but I know myself better than that.

I suspect I’m not the only pastor who wrestles with this.

Other questions deserve our attention. How much of our ministry has been shaped around the gifts and personalities of pastors? Have we created churches where people are encouraged to follow Jesus, or have we unintentionally taught them to depend on a handful of professionals to do the work of faith for them? (btw, we have)

Congregations have their own reckoning.

We’ve become remarkably comfortable evaluating churches according to what they provide us. We have opinions about preaching, music, children’s programs, and whether a particular church feels like a good fit. We have opinions about the decor (or, as some call it, religious imagery/art), carpets (for and against), and other aesthetics. Some of those concerns are legitimate. Churches should care about how they welcome people, how they embody beauty, and whether their ministries are serving them well.

But somewhere along the way, personal preference has acquired an authority it probably doesn’t deserve. We can become so accustomed to asking whether a church meets our needs that we rarely consider what our presence might mean for the people already there.

I wonder how many of us say we want Christian community when what we actually want is to feel connected without having to be known. We appreciate the idea of people carrying one another’s burdens, provided someone else is available to do the carrying.

And perhaps we’ve become comfortable paying pastors and church staff to practice a kind of Christian life we admire but don’t intend to live ourselves.

This is difficult territory, and I don’t think pastors or congregations get to excuse themselves from it.

What concerns me most is what all of this is doing to us.

I don’t mean whether we’re attending more services or participating in more church activities. I’m asking whether our shared life is actually making us more like Jesus.

Think about the people who know us best. Our spouses, children, coworkers, and neighbors. Would they say we’ve become more patient over the last several years? Do they see people learning to pray, admitting when they’re wrong, and less threatened by disagreement? Or have we simply become more knowledgeable about our faith while remaining largely unchanged in the ways we treat one another?

I find those questions considerably more unsettling than an attendance report.

They’re also questions we don’t know how to manage very well.

A pastor can create a system, but a pastor cannot manufacture spiritual formation. We can teach Scripture and help people develop practices that open their lives to God. We can model what it looks like to confess our failures and invite others to do the same. Church leaders have important work to do.

But the Holy Spirit forms a Christian. And the Spirit has never seemed particularly interested in following our quarterly goals.

In his work on the early church, Alan Kreider describes the patient formation of a people whose everyday habits made the Christian faith compelling to those around them. Their witness was inseparable from the kind of lives they were learning to live. The gospel had become visible in them.

That fascinates me, particularly because so much of our contemporary approach to church assumes that the right presentation will produce the right response.

I’m not convinced that’s how people are formed.

And I’m increasingly concerned that our constant pursuit of new solutions allows us to avoid examining the desires that produced our problems in the first place.

We can change our ministry language without changing what we love. A church can adopt the vocabulary of community and still organize its entire life around the Sunday production. A pastor can preach humility while quietly measuring his worth against another congregation's success. We can talk about spiritual formation while still rewarding the things that are easiest to count.

I know because I’ve participated in some of this myself.

That’s why I believe repentance has to come before our next big idea. Otherwise, we’re likely to carry the same assumptions into whatever we build. We might even convince ourselves that we’ve changed because the new version looks different.

Repentance asks something more difficult of us.

For pastors, it may begin with admitting that we don’t know how to fix what we’ve helped create. I don’t particularly enjoy that admission. After more than twenty years in ministry, I’d like to think I have some answers. And maybe I do. But I’m learning to be suspicious of how quickly I reach for them.

For congregations, repentance might mean accepting that the problems we see in the church aren’t exclusively the responsibility of its leaders. We have helped shape this culture through our expectations and the ways we’ve chosen to participate, or not participate, in the life of the church.

And perhaps, for all of us, it means recovering the ability to sit before God without immediately turning the experience into something productive. This is the practice of contemplative prayer (slowing down to hear from God).

I don’t think the answer is to abandon organization or stop caring about doing things well. I’m grateful for competent leadership, thoughtful planning, and ministries that serve people effectively. Those things matter.

But they were never meant to be the substance of the church’s life.

Our programs should support the life we’re sharing, not replace it. The way we communicate about our church should reflect something true about who we are. And pastors, however gifted or faithful, cannot live the Christian life on behalf of their congregations.

I expect genuine repentance will eventually require practical changes. We may have to reconsider where our money goes or why our calendars are so full. There may be ministries we’ve maintained for years that no longer serve the people we’ve been called to become. We may need to challenge some of our assumptions about leadership, success, and what a healthy church looks like.

I’m not sure yet what all of that should look like. And for once, I think I’m okay with not having a plan ready.

What I do know is that we need to become more willing to tell the truth about ourselves.

Before we decide what the church needs to build next, perhaps we ought to spend some time considering what we’ve already built has done to us.

We celebrate another church’s growth, but we also wonder whether some of those people used to attend ours. We pray for the church across town, but we compare attendance, buildings, worship, staff, preaching, giving, programs, and influence. We speak about the kingdom of God while quietly guarding our market share.

Our branding has trained us to see separate churches as separate companies.

Each congregation has a name, logo, culture, strategy, audience, and product. We identify what makes us different. We tell people why our church is a good fit. We build loyalty to our location, our leaders, our values, and how we do ministry.

Some local identity is healthy. Churches are real communities in real places, and no congregation can do everything. Traditions matter. Callings differ. One church may be deeply invested in recovery ministry while another serves immigrants, plants churches, cares for children, or offers a faithful presence in a rural community. Difference is not the problem.

Competition is.

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Paul did not describe the church as a collection of religious companies competing for consumers. He called us one body. In 1 Corinthians 12, there are many parts, many gifts, and many kinds of service, but one Spirit and one body. A hand does not become more successful when the foot struggles. An eye does not gain influence when the ear disappears.

If we are one body, another church’s fruit is not our loss. God doesn’t reward one church by punishing another.

Another pastor’s influence does not diminish our calling. Another congregation’s baptism is a reason to celebrate, even if the person once sat in our sanctuary. Another church reaching people we could not reach is not evidence that we failed. It may show the body is working.

Corporate brands need consumers to choose them instead of their competitors. The body of Christ gives itself away in love.

That difference reaches beyond how pastors relate to one another. It changes how Christians think about belonging.

If churches are competing brands, then the goal is to find the one that best matches our preferences.

If the church is a body, then the question is not simply, “Which place fits me?” It is also, “Where am I called to belong, serve, forgive, grow, and give myself away?”

Belonging to a body is different from attaching ourselves to a brand.

We can wear a brand without knowing anyone else who wears it. We can consume its content, attend its events, and recommend it to friends without ever being personally responsible for another human being. A body is more demanding. If one part suffers, the others suffer. If one part is missing, the whole body feels the absence.

The consumer church lets us remain replaceable. We can disappear, and someone else will fill the seat. The body of Christ says our presence matters—not because we help the numbers, but because we belong to one another.

This is why church competition is not just an ugly leadership habit. It is an ecclesiological problem. It tells the world that our local success matters more than our shared witness. It turns pastors into brand managers and Christians into customers moving between locations.

Jesus prayed that his people would be one. That unity does not require every church to merge, every pastor to agree on strategy, or every Christian tradition to lose its distinctives. It requires us to remember whose church this is.

It is not mine. It is not ours. It is Christ’s.

I’m glad when we recognize a local church and understand its calling. But the moment our brand becomes something we must defend against another part of Christ’s body, it has become too important. The moment our brand becomes the wink and nod that says, “This place is so much better than that place,” well, then we’ve really lost our way.

We don't need to erase every church name or pretend differences don't matter. We need the humility to hold those names loosely. No competition exists among us because there is no “us” and “them” within the body of Christ.

There is one Lord, one Spirit, one body, and one calling: to embody the life of Jesus together.

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They come late. They leave early. They complain about the music, the preaching, the children’s ministry, the temperature, and the coffee. They want the church to meet their needs, but they do not want the church to ask too much of them. When they become unhappy, they disappear and show up at another church a few weeks later.

It is easy to be irritated by that.
It is harder to admit that we helped form it.

We cannot spend decades treating people like a target market and then shame them for behaving like customers. We cannot build ministry around attraction, convenience, excellence, and personal benefit, then blame people when those are the categories they use to judge us.

This is not their problem. It is ours.

Pastors helped build this culture. I say that as a pastor. We learned to measure faithfulness through attendance, giving, buildings, baptisms, volunteer numbers, online views, and momentum. Some of those measurements matter. Numbers can represent actual people, and people matter deeply. But numbers can also become a way of proving that we matter.

We learned to present vision in ways that would create buy-in. We studied how to attract people, keep people, move people through systems, and turn attenders into contributors. We learned to speak of human beings as target groups, demographics, giving units, leaders, and volunteers.

Most pastors I know genuinely love people and want them to encounter Jesus. The foundations were often honorable. But good intentions do not keep a system from forming us in unhealthy ways.

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Congregations helped sustain the culture too. We platformed the churches that impressed us. We followed the leaders who inspired us. We gave our time and money to ministries that delivered meaningful experiences. We celebrated growth, visibility, and influence as evidence that God was doing something important.

Leaders produced what people rewarded, and people learned to want what leaders produced.

We built this together.

That matters because repentance cannot begin with accusation. If pastors stand on platforms and scold people for failing to serve, commit, give, or stay, we are ignoring our own part in their formation. If congregants blame pastors for turning churches into businesses while continuing to shop for the church with the best product, we are doing the same thing.

There is enough repentance to go around.

Pastors may need to repent for confusing influence with fruitfulness. We may need to admit that full rooms made us feel successful and empty rooms made us question our calling. We may need to confess that we built systems requiring constant production, then became frustrated when people expected us to keep producing.

Congregants may need to repent for confusing preference with discernment. We may need to admit that we called churches unhealthy when they simply stopped centering us. We may need to confess that we wanted deep community as long as it did not require difficult conversations, inconvenient service, or relationships with people we would not naturally choose.

All of us may need to repent for outsourcing the Christian life.

We hired people to care, teach, visit, disciple, organize, evangelize, and pray. Then we came alongside their systems and called that ministry. Paid ministry is not the enemy. Scripture recognizes particular callings and leadership. But pastors were never meant to perform the life of the body on behalf of everyone else.

This is where humility must replace blame.

The question is not, “Who ruined the church?” The question is, “What have we built together, and what is it making of us?”

I am not standing outside this system throwing rocks at it. I am a pastor within it. I have benefited from it, contributed to it, defended parts of it, and sometimes confused its success with the work of God.

That is why this is a confession before it is a criticism. (This statement is hopeful, by the way).

If the disciples are the brand, then the church's condition belongs to all of us. We will not move forward by finding better people, better pastors, or a better model to copy.

We begin by telling the truth about what we have loved, rewarded, and become.

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As long as the music works, the preaching connects, the programs meet our needs, and the people treat us the way we expect, it is easy to talk about belonging. The real test comes when something changes, someone ticks us off, or the church simply stops being what we wanted it to be. A pastor gives and receives these tests (unknowingly, at times) every week.

That is when our formation becomes visible.

Many of us respond in one of two ways. Some quietly disengage and begin looking for the right church—the one with the better music, stronger teaching, more exciting youth ministry, friendlier people, or a more convenient schedule. Others stay physically present but become complaint-card Christians. We keep pushing until a pastor or decision-maker becomes “spiritual enough” to recognize the problem we have already diagnosed and fix the thing they are paid to address.

Sometimes leaving is necessary. Abuse should not be endured in the name of loyalty. Manipulation, serious theological corruption, and unsafe leadership should not be excused with talk about unity. Sometimes wisdom requires distance.

But that is not what most church disappointment is.

Most of it is ordinary. A decision was made without us. A ministry changed. A pastor said something poorly. Someone did not call. Our child did not connect. We did not receive the recognition we expected. A relationship became tense. The church asked us for something we did not want to give.

In those moments, our consumer formation gives us a simple script: If this brand no longer meets your expectations, find another one.

The issue beneath that script is deeper than church shopping. I would argue that many of us do not know how to be known.

We know how to attend. We know how to serve on a team, sit in a group, give money, sing songs, and discuss a sermon. We may even know how to lead. But being involved is not the same as being known.

Being known means telling the truth about what hurt us without turning the other person into a villain. It means listening when someone tells us how we affected them. It means staying in the room when our instinct is to leave. It means allowing conflict to expose something in us, not just something wrong with them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned in Life Together that our idealized picture of Christian community can become an enemy of the actual community God has given us. We can love our dream of church more than we love the people in the church. Then, when real people fail to match the dream, we blame them for destroying something that never truly existed.

Real community is not the absence of disappointment. It is the place where disappointment can be carried truthfully, humbly, and redemptively.

This does not mean every conflict ends neatly. Reconciliation requires truth, accountability, and willingness from everyone involved. Some relationships remain limited. Some wounds take years to heal. Some decisions cannot be undone.

But if our first response to tension is withdrawal, accusation, or shopping, we may will miss the work God wants to do in us.

We often ask God to move in our church, but when God begins moving through an uncomfortable conversation, a wounded relationship, or an unmet expectation, we call it dysfunction and leave. We want transformation, but we do not always recognize it when it arrives wearing work boots.

Maybe conflict isn't keeping us from the spiritual work. Maybe, sometimes, it is the spiritual work.

The church will disappoint us because the church is made of people, and people are unfinished. Pastors are unfinished. Leaders are unfinished. We are unfinished. The answer is not pretending harm does not matter or staying in every unhealthy situation. The answer is learning to discern the difference between danger and discomfort, between spiritual conviction and personal preference, between a broken system and a bruised ego.

A church formed by consumerism asks, “Am I still getting what I came for?”

A church formed by Jesus asks, “How can we remain in truth and love long enough for Christ to form us here?”

That is a much harder question.

It may also be where real belonging begins.

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Somewhere along the way, many of us turned church into a religious product.

We didn’t mean to. At least, I don’t think we did. Most of us were trying to reach people. We wanted church to be a place where families felt welcome, children were safe, teenagers wanted to come back, and people could hear about Jesus in language they understood.

And a lot of good has come from that.
People have encountered God. Marriages have received help. Children have learned Scripture. Teenagers have found adults who cared enough to listen. Lonely people have found a place to belong. I have seen all of that happen, and I am grateful for it.

Still, we need to be honest about what else we created.

We built churches where the parking is easy, the coffee is hot, the children have fun, the music sounds good, and the sermon leaves people challenged—but hopefully not so challenged that they won’t come back next Sunday. We developed programs for every age and stage of life. We hired people to run them. We polished our language, clarified our values, upgraded our environments, and learned how to promote it all.

And, naturally, we made T-shirts.

None of those things is sinful. I like good coffee. I want children to enjoy church. I believe we should do our work well.

The trouble is not any one of those things. The trouble is what they begin to communicate when we put them all together. Whether we intend to or not, we can teach people that church exists to provide them with a dependable, meaningful, high-quality religious experience.

That message usually isn’t preached from the pulpit. It's built into the way we invite people. Come because your kids will love it. Come because your teenager won’t be bored. Come because the worship is powerful, the preaching is relevant, and there is something here for everyone in your family.

Then people arrive, settle in, and eventually begin evaluating the church by the same promises we used to attract them.

• Do my kids still like it?

• Am I being fed?

• Do I enjoy the music?

• Is this worth my time?

• Could another church meet my needs better?

Pastors sometimes complain about those questions, but we should probably admit that we helped teach people to ask them. We appealed to consumer instincts to get people through the doors and then acted surprised when those instincts followed them inside.

People can feel that contradiction, even if they do not have words for it. We tell them, “We have something for you.” Later, we tell them, “This isn’t about you.”

Both statements may contain some truth, but together they create a strange kind of church life.

Henri Nouwen wrote about three temptations facing Christian leaders: the desire to be relevant, spectacular, and powerful. I wish I could say the modern church rejected those temptations. More often, I think we changed their names.

Relevance became reaching people.

Spectacle became excellence.

Power became influence.

Those words can describe good and faithful things. They can also cover up our anxious need to prove that what we are doing matters.

I know that anxiety. I know how easy it is to look at attendance, giving, online engagement, or the energy in a room and use those things to decide whether Sunday “worked.” I know the pressure to keep producing something people will come back for. I also know how difficult it can be to tell where pastoral care ends and customer service begins.

Eventually, everybody gets tired.

Pastors get tired of producing church every week. Staff members get tired of holding all the pieces together. Volunteers get tired of filling the holes necessary to keep everything running. The congregation gets tired too, because even the best experience must be topped eventually.

The room may be full, the music may be excellent, and everything may happen on time—and yet something can still feel thin.

Maybe what is missing is not another program. Maybe it is the shared life of the church. Sometimes, well-meaning religious folk call this the “presence of God.” But it isn’t God’s presence that’s missing— at least, not in a religious sense.

When I read the New Testament, I do not see professionals delivering a religious experience to an audience. I see a body. I see people eating together, carrying one another’s burdens, sharing what they have, confessing their sins, practicing hospitality, forgiving each other, and learning—usually imperfectly—how to live under the lordship of Jesus. And this is more normal and frequent in their lives than anything else.

I see people who actually need one another.

That kind of life cannot be produced from a stage. The stage can teach us. It can call us toward faithfulness. It can give us language for what God is doing among us. But it cannot live the Christian life for us.

The church has to become flesh somewhere. And this flesh lives and breathes every day, not just in the 75 minutes reserved for the Sunday show.

It has to show up at the dinner table, in the hospital waiting room, during the uncomfortable conversation, and in the long season when someone has nothing impressive to offer. It looks like being known well enough that people can tell when you are not okay. It looks like staying when leaving would be easier.

Incarnation, if you want to get specific.

That is why the church’s branding problem cannot be fixed with a new logo, a better slogan, or marketing that uses the word “authentic” more often. The deeper issue is the promise underneath the whole thing.

Come here, and we will give you the kind of church experience you have been looking for.

But Jesus' invitation is different.

Come and follow me.

Come and be known.

Come receive grace, and then learn how to give your life away.

Come belong to people you probably would not have chosen for yourself.

Come die—and discover that this is where real life begins.

The first invitation may help us gather a crowd.

Only the second can form us into a church.

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It is not the mission statement, the logo, the denominational label, or the list of values on the website. Those things may describe who we hope to be. The people we form reveal who we are actually becoming.

The disciples are the brand.

That is not meant as an insult. It is a way of naming something the church has always known: people are formed by what they repeatedly do.

We can say we value prayer, but if prayer is only used to open meetings and transition between songs, we are teaching something about prayer. We can say we value community, but if most of our life together happens while facing a stage, we are teaching something about community. We can say every believer is called to ministry, but if paid professionals do the important ministry, we are teaching people where ministry really belongs.

Our practices are always preaching.

James K. A. Smith has written extensively about the way repeated practices shape our desires. We are not formed only by the ideas we agree with. We are formed by the routines, habits, environments, and stories that train us to want certain things. That means a church can preach one message while its systems preach another.

We can preach participation while building everything around observation.

We can preach sacrifice while advertising personal benefit.

We can preach belonging while making it easy to remain unknown.

We can preach that every person has a calling while paying a small group of people to carry most of the church’s calling for us.

What kind of disciple does that form?

Often, it forms a person who expects

excellence without participation,

community without vulnerability,

conviction without too much discomfort,

and ministry without much personal responsibility.

It forms people who admire generosity, outreach, diversity, justice, and care for the hurting, but mostly want to be associated with churches that do those things.

We like knowing somebody is feeding people. We like seeing the pictures. We like wearing the shirt. We are less certain we want to learn anyone’s name, rearrange our schedule, open our home, or remain in a relationship that asks something costly from us.

This is where church values can become another kind of branding. We say, “We are a generous church,” when what we sometimes mean is that the church budget pays someone to do generous work. We say, “We care about our community,” when what we sometimes mean is that we enjoy being associated with a staff-led outreach program. We say, “We value discipleship,” while assuming the pastor’s content will do the discipling for us.

That does not mean the values are fake. It means association is not the same as formation.

Watching someone serve does not make me a servant. Listening to someone pray does not make me a person of prayer. Attending a church that welcomes people unlike me does not mean I have learned to love people unlike me. Applauding a baptism does not mean I am making disciples.

The people our churches form eventually tell the truth about the churches we have built.

If we form people who shop, rate, consume, complain, and leave when their preferences are no longer centered, we cannot dismiss them as immature Christians and move on. We must ask how our shared life trained them to understand the church that way.

Pastors must ask it. Church boards must ask it. Worship leaders and ministry directors must ask it. Congregations must ask it. I must ask it.

What are our practices making of us?

Are we becoming more patient?

Are we learning to confess?

Can we forgive without pretending nothing happened?

Can we remain present when a relationship becomes uncomfortable?

Are we growing in courage, generosity, gentleness, and prayer?

Are we learning to carry one another’s burdens instead of asking staff members to carry them for us?

This is not a measurement we can place neatly on a dashboard. It is slower and harder to count. It may be one reason we prefer attendance, giving, views, and volunteer numbers. Those figures tell us something, but they cannot tell us whether people are becoming like Christ.

Our churches may say many good things about themselves. The deeper question is what our life together is teaching people to love.

The answer is our real brand.

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We have logos, color palettes, websites, apps, sermon graphics, social media strategies, welcome videos, and carefully worded value statements. We know how to make a church feel modern, clear, safe, and exciting before someone ever walks through the door. We know how to explain who we are, what we offer, and why someone should give us a Sunday morning.

None of that is wrong.

Good communication matters. Clean buildings matter. Safe children’s ministries matter. Excellence can be an act of hospitality. If we know guests are coming, it makes sense to clean the house, turn on the lights, and make room for them.

But I believe the church has a branding problem, and it is much deeper than our logos or websites.

A brand is not only what we say about ourselves. It is what people have learned to expect from us. It is the promise, spoken or unspoken, that comes to mind when someone hears our name. By that definition, a church's real brand is revealed by the kind of people its life together produces.

That is where this gets uncomfortable.

For much of the last generation, the Protestant, evangelical, church-growth world has worked hard to create an excellent religious experience. We have built environments where the music is strong, the preaching is engaging, the children have fun, the teenagers want to return, and every member of the family can find something designed for them. We have learned how to remove barriers, shorten lines, improve systems, and make Sunday morning run smoothly. We’ve relied heavily on Chick-Fil-A and Disney marketing.

Again, none of those things is evil. Plenty of people have met God in those rooms. People have been saved, baptized, healed, encouraged, and called into ministry. Myself included. God has worked in spite of our mess and right in the middle of our best efforts.

But our methods are never neutral. The way we gather people also teaches people what the gathering is for.

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When we constantly present the church through convenience, quality, choice, inspiration, and personal benefit, people begin to engage with us (the church) as if those things are the point. We may preach sacrifice while our entire system promises satisfaction. We may talk about carrying a cross while quietly assuring people that we have built a religious experience customized for every member of the family.

Then we act surprised when people approach the church like customers.

We should not be surprised. We have spent decades using consumer instincts to attract people and then wondering why those same instincts shape how they belong. When the music changes, the preacher disappoints them, their preferred program disappears, or a relationship becomes hard, they begin looking for a better fit. That is what consumers have been taught to do.

The problem is not that churches care about quality. The problem is that quality can quietly become the promise. Excellence moves from being a tool of hospitality to becoming an identity. Success begins to mean more people, more programs, more visibility, and more momentum. Eventually, maintaining the experience takes so much energy that we have little left for the slow, hidden work of forming people in prayer, patience, confession, forgiveness, and love.

That slow work does not photograph well. It does not always create momentum. It is difficult to fit into a highlight reel.

Eugene Peterson spent much of his writing life warning pastors about trading the quiet work of prayer, Scripture, and spiritual direction for the visible work of running a successful religious organization. His concern was not that organization is unnecessary. His concern was that it can become a substitute for the work itself.

That warning feels painfully current.

We know how to communicate the brand. We are less certain that we like what the brand has become.

This is not a call to fire the communications team, turn off the stage lights, or make church intentionally bad. It is a call to tell the truth. Our stated values do not define us nearly as much as the people our shared practices are forming.

The church’s real brand is walking out the door every Sunday.

The question is not simply whether people enjoyed the service. The question is whether we are becoming people who look like Jesus.

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My solution had been to keep giving it more gas. The tires spun faster, the hole got deeper, and the mower went nowhere.

There is a particular kind of helplessness that comes with being stuck. You have tried everything you know to do, and none of it has worked.

That is where Israel finds itself in Exodus 14.

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Free—and Already Stuck

After more than 400 years of slavery, Israel finally walks out of Egypt.

Then Pharaoh changes his mind and sends his army after them. Suddenly, Israel has the Red Sea in front of them, Pharaoh’s army behind them, and nowhere to go.

They have barely tasted freedom, and they are already stuck again.

Here is the uncomfortable part: God led them there.

Before reaching the sea, God deliberately takes Israel away from the shortest road to the Promised Land.

“God said, ‘If the people are faced with a battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’ So God led them in a roundabout way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea.”

—Exodus 13:17–18 NLT

The shorter road existed. It was quicker, easier, and made more sense.

But God knew what was waiting on that road, and He knew Israel wasn’t ready for it.

We often assume the shortest way must be the best way. Exodus says otherwise.

Sometimes God takes His people the long way because He sees what they cannot. What feels like a delay may actually be preparation.

The driver who sees farther chooses the better road.

Who Is Really Trapped?

The story gets stranger in Exodus 14. God tells Israel exactly where to camp—a place that leaves them looking boxed in.

Pharaoh sees an easy target.

Israel thinks it is trapped.

God knows Pharaoh is the one walking into a trap.

That difference matters.

Sometimes God leads us into places only He can lead us out of.

Israel responds with panic, fear, complaining, and a pretty sharp dose of sarcasm:

“Were there not enough graves in Egypt?”

In modern language: Wonderful. We escaped slavery just in time to die tired.

They do not bring a strategy. They do not show impressive courage or mountain-moving faith. They mostly have a meltdown.

God rescues them anyway.

Moses tells the people:

“Don’t be afraid. Stand firm and watch God do his work of salvation for you today.”

—Exodus 14:13 MSG

That may be the hardest command in the chapter. When you are scared, standing still feels irresponsible. Everything in you wants to take control, force an answer, or spin the tires a little harder.

But spinning the tires only digs the hole deeper.

Israel could not fight, swim, or strategize its way out. God had to make a way.

And He did.

God chose the road. God opened the sea. God defeated Egypt. God received the glory.

Israel mostly stood there trembling.

That is encouraging for those of us who assume God only works through fearless people with unshakable faith. Apparently, God can do plenty with trembling faith too.

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A Road Through the Grave

This story reaches beyond the Red Sea. It points toward Jesus.

Jesus also looked trapped. Friday looked like defeat. Death appeared to have won.

Then Sunday morning happened.

The greatest dead end in history—a sealed grave—became the site of the greatest victory in history.

The God who made a road through the sea made a road through death.

That is the deeper hope of Exodus. God does not merely help people manage difficult circumstances. He rescues people who cannot rescue themselves.

The same is true for us. Our deepest problem is not financial, relational, or professional. It is sin, and we cannot work our way free from it.

That is why Jesus came.

The God who made a way through the sea has made a way to Himself through the cross.

God Is Not Stuck

Maybe life has not taken the road you expected. What looked like a simple trip has become a long detour. What felt like freedom has led to another place where you cannot see a way forward.

That does not mean God has abandoned you.

The place that feels like proof of His absence may become the place where He shows you who He is.

You may be stuck.

God isn’t.

And if He knows the road that brought you here, He also knows the way through.

From nothing?

What is the point?

Silence is deafening— every creak, buzz, tone… I hear them.

It’s unsettling.

Every vibration and notification,

Screaming for my attention.

I am used to giving my attention to the screaming sounds.

The screaming people.

People scream.

What good will silence do?

To sit— eyes open or closed?

Kneeling? Do I pray?

No. I am silent.

So, what then?

How am I supposed to shut off my mind?

Lists and things I need to do are casting a loud shadow.

What does it even mean to be silent when my mind is so loud?

Do I fake it?

Take a nap?

I understand, though— there are many loud things.

I need to detox, I suppose.

Maybe just some music will help with the silence.

Yes. Add something.

But then, I am singing— not loudly— but in my head.

Every word.

And I am back to thinking. My mind awakes again.

What on earth am I supposed to do with this?

What do I do with nothing?

What can come from silence?

In the beginning, God created…

Out of nothing…out of chaos…

In the silence, a word.

And light sliced through.

And then it hits me… I do nothing

Because he creates.

Silence

Is the canvas.

Nothing

Is my offering.

I am reminded— I am not the Creator.

I am the dust— the earth— the created.

I am the silence.

What good can come from silence?

I suppose all good.

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Not who impressed me.

Not who won debates.

Not who had the biggest churches or the cleanest doctrinal statements.

Who actually carried Jesus to me.

A lot of them were women.

Lottie Moon taught me that devotion to Christ should cost something.

Cheryl Bridges Johns showed me that Spirit and intellect are not enemies.

Fleming Rutledge taught me to preach the cross bigger than my tribe.

Sojourner Truth reminded me that sometimes the people closest to Jesus are the ones the religious establishment explains away.

Shirley Arnold preached like she believed the gospel would knock us down.

Gerry White sparked my curiosity about the Old Testament.

Mandy Smith helped me see God’s power by embracing my own vulnerabilities.

And before all of them—

my mother.

A kids pastor in the 80s.

Before “leadership pipelines.”
Before podcasts.
Before churches figured out how to celebrate women publicly while quietly keeping the keys.

She preached to children.
She prayed.
She discipled.
She did the work.

No platform.
No spotlight.

Just faithfulness.

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And if I’m honest—

I would not be in ministry if women had stayed in the places some Christians still think they belong.

That should bother us.

Not because it settles every theological question.

But because at some point we should become suspicious of our (the church’s) odd fascination with being “right.”

I belong to a fellowship that, decades ago, had the courage to affirm women in ministry.

That matters.

But if I can say this as family—

sometimes we have celebrated our theology more than we have practiced it.

We wrote statements. We looked right on paper.

And before we congratulate ourselves too much, maybe we should ask why we felt so good about that. The statement was never broadly implemented.

But this isn’t really about one issue.

This is about something deeper.

There is something in us that loves being right.

And Christians baptize it.

We take our understanding, polish it until it shines, frame it, defend it, and then slowly—almost without noticing—we begin bowing to it.

Not Jesus.

But to our understanding of Jesus.

We divide churches over it.

We pass policies over it.

We elevate leaders because they protect it.

We look down on brothers and sisters who read the same Bible and somehow arrive at different places.

And all the while we convince ourselves this is faithfulness.

Shocking thought:

Maybe we do not understand as much as we think we do.

Maybe being able to quote Greek verbs and systematize Romans doesn’t mean we’ve mastered the mind of Christ.

Maybe certainty is easier than humility.

Maybe defending our position feels safer than kneeling at the cross.

Because the cross is lower than we think.

Nobody kneels at Calvary carrying trophies.

Nobody gets extra grace for winning doctrinal arguments.

Nobody arrives, and Jesus says—

“Thank God you protected Me from those people.”

At the cross, everybody comes empty.

Everybody.

And if that’s true—

then maybe the church should carry itself with more trembling than triumph.

I love the church.

I really do.

But man—

sometimes I wish the church I know in the Southeast—the Protestant, evangelical, homecoming under the trees with sweet-tea church I grew up around—felt less like the family’s weird aunt.

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You know the one.

Always offended.
Always suspicious.
Always explaining why somebody else shouldn’t be speaking.
Always protecting something.
Always one committee meeting away from a split.

Quick to correct.

Slow to listen.

Certain about everything.

Curious about nothing.

Meanwhile Jesus keeps showing up in places we swore He wouldn’t.

Among people we underestimated.

Using voices we did not authorize.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Church history is full of Christians who had verses.

And still missed God.

That possibility should terrify us.

I do not want a church that worships uncertainty.

But I also do not want a church that worships being right.

I want a church low enough to repent.

Low enough to listen.

Low enough to say:

“This is where we stand.

And Jesus may still have something to teach us.”

Because if Pentecost taught us anything—

it is that the Spirit has never asked our permission before falling on sons and daughters.

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Which is exactly why I need to say this.

Somewhere along the way, many of us (church people) stopped being curious.

We inherited answers and called them faith. We inherited traditions and called them doctrine. We inherited interpretations and called them the Bible itself. We learned what to think, but forgot how to wonder.

And that worries me.

I think we’ve confused faith with certainty.

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Not all of us. Not everywhere. But enough of us that it’s become part of the air we breathe. We’ve created churches where people feel pressure to have answers before they’ve even learned how to ask questions. We’ve built cultures where changing your mind feels like failure. We’ve treated growth like a threat, or worse, like something that is only visible on a graph or spreadsheet.

And somewhere along the way, we started acting like whatever we learned first is whatever we have to believe forever.

But that’s not how life works.

And it sure isn’t how discipleship works.

When I was a kid, I learned things about God that were true enough to get me started. But if I still understood God exactly the way I did at ten years old, something would be terribly wrong. The faith that first introduced me to Jesus was never supposed to be the finished product. Seeds are not failures because they become trees.

The first thing you learn is not the last thing you learn.

At least it shouldn’t be.

Yet I see Christians holding onto ideas they inherited decades ago as though questioning them would somehow betray God.

What if we’ve mistaken loyalty to our assumptions for loyalty to Christ?

What if the thing we’re defending isn’t actually God at all?

What if it’s just what we’ve always been told?

That’s a frightening thought. And maybe it should be. Because real growth always carries risk. The carpenter who learns a better way has to admit the old way wasn’t the best way. The mechanic who discovers a problem has to take the engine apart before it can run right again. The farmer who wants a harvest has to tear up the ground.

Nothing grows without disruption.

Nothing matures without change.

Nothing comes alive without leaving something behind.

Including faith.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that some of the things I feel absolutely certain about today may need to be challenged tomorrow.

Not because truth changes. Not because God changes. ot because scripture changes.

Because I do.

Because I am still learning.

Because I still have blind spots.

Because I have not arrived.

And frankly, neither have you.

That’s not weakness. That’s being human.

I worry that many churches have become places where people are welcomed as they are but expected to stay exactly the same. Of course, the church expects people to lay down their sin, but have we also expected each other to lay down our minds? Our curiosities? Our fantasies?

Or worse, we’ve become places where people learn very quickly which questions are acceptable and which questions are not. Places where curiosity gets treated like rebellion. Places where doubt gets treated like disease. Places where people quietly stop growing because growth might upset someone. But if we cannot question what we believe, do we actually believe it? Or have we merely inherited it?

If our convictions cannot survive examination, are they convictions or just habits?

If our faith requires us to stop learning, is it faith at all?

I don’t want to be part of a church that demands this type of certainty.

I want to be part of a church that demands honesty.

A church where people can say, “I don’t know.”

A church where people can admit, “I used to think that, but now I’m not so sure.” Or even a church where people can say, “I know what the Bible says in that particular place, but it seems to say something different in this particular place. What the heck?”

A church where Scripture is not a weapon used to shut down conversations but an invitation into deeper ones.

A church where people are free to wrestle.

Free to investigate.

Free to wonder.

Free to grow.

Because that’s where I’ve found life. Not in pretending I have God figured out. Not in defending every opinion I’ve ever held. Not in acting like my understanding can’t change. I’ve found life in discovering that God is always bigger than my categories. Always deeper than my assumptions. Always ahead of me.

And maybe that’s the real danger of certainty. Not that we’ll be wrong. We’re all wrong about plenty of things. The danger is that certainty can make us stop listening. Stop learning.

Stop growing.

Stop noticing where God is trying to lead us next.

A faith that never changes is not necessarily a faithful one.

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Sometimes it’s just a stagnant one. And stagnant things don’t stay alive for long.

So here’s my plea:

Stay curious.

Read widely.

Ask better questions.

Refuse easy answers.

Interrogate the beliefs you’ve been given, scrutinize them.

Hold your convictions with courage and your conclusions with humility.

And never confuse the place where you started with the place where you’re supposed to stay.

Because following Jesus has never been about arriving. It’s always been about becoming. And I don’t know exactly where that road leads.

I just know that I don’t want to stop walking it.

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She wasn’t looking for hope.

That’s the part we tend to forget about Easter morning.

Mary Magdalene shows up while it’s still dark—not just in the sky, but in her understanding. She’s not coming with expectation. She’s not coming with anticipation. She’s coming with grief.

And when she sees the stone rolled away, her first thought isn’t, “He’s risen.”

It’s, “They took Him.”

Of course it is.

Because when trauma hits, your mind doesn’t reach for hope—it reaches for an explanation.

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When Everything Gets Worse

The crucifixion didn’t just make them sad. It shattered them.

Public humiliation. Brutal execution. The man they believed would change everything… dead.

And now this?

The tomb is open. The body is gone.

It feels like it just got worse.

You ever been there?

Like you’ve already lost something… and then something else happens that makes you think, “Are you serious? What now?”

That’s where Mary is standing.

So she runs.

Because that’s what we do. We move. We look for support. We find people who can help us make sense of what we’re seeing.

She finds Peter and John. And then they start running too.

Not casually. Urgently.

Grief has a pace to it.

Different Speeds, Same Search

John outruns Peter.

But Peter goes in first.

Isn’t that interesting?

Some people process pain quickly. Others move slower—but go deeper. Some hesitate at the edge. Others step right into the mess.

But all of them are trying to answer the same question:

What just happened?

They look inside.

And what they see is… strange.

The grave clothes are still there.

Not scattered. Not stolen.

Folded. Intentional. Undisturbed.

Which means this wasn’t theft.

This wasn’t chaos.

This was something else.

Not an Escape—A Departure

When Lazarus was raised from the dead, he walked out still wrapped in grave clothes. He needed help. He came back to life—but it was the same kind of life. Temporary. Fragile.

Jesus is different.

He leaves the grave clothes behind.

He doesn’t need them.

He doesn’t take them with Him.

He doesn’t even disturb them.

It’s almost like death itself has been… stepped out of.

Not escaped.

Abandoned.

Jesus didn’t run from death.

He walked out of it and left it behind.

Forever.

Belief Before Understanding

And then John sees it.

And something clicks.

Not fully. Not completely. Not with all the theology worked out.

But enough.

He sees… and he believes.

And here’s what the text says next:

They still didn’t understand.

That’s important.

Because we tend to think faith comes after understanding.

But in this moment, belief shows up first.

Understanding comes later.

That’s how faith works.

You don’t wait until everything makes sense.

You respond to what you’ve seen.

The Kind of Faith That Grows in Storms

There’s a kind of belief that exists before the cross.

It’s real—but it’s simple. Untested.

And then there’s the kind that comes after.

After loss. After confusion. After everything you thought was stable falls apart.

That kind of faith is different.

It’s deeper.

Stronger.

Rooted.

I was driving after a storm not too long ago—hours of relentless wind and rain. The kind that keeps you awake at night.

The next morning, I saw trees down everywhere.

Young trees. Healthy-looking trees. Completely uprooted.

But the older ones?

Still standing.

Scarred. Damaged. Missing branches.

But standing.

Why?

Because they’d been through storms before.

Every time the wind hit them, something happened underground.

Their roots stretched. Reached deeper. Wrapped around stability they didn’t have before.

So when the next storm came, they weren’t the same tree.

They were stronger.

What looked like damage… actually developed them.

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What You Can’t See Is What’s Holding You Up

Some of you have walked through storms you thought would take you out.

And if you’re honest, it shook everything.

But what you couldn’t see is what God was doing underneath the surface.

While everything above ground felt unstable…

Your roots were growing.

Your faith was stretching.

You were becoming harder to move.

Because a storm doesn’t weaken a rooted tree.

It deepens it.

While You’re Still in the Dark…

Here’s what I love about this moment in the story:

While Mary is confused…
While Peter is processing…
While John is just beginning to believe…

Jesus is already walking in the garden.

Alive.

Free.

On the other side of the worst thing that ever happened.

They’re still in the dark.

He’s already in resurrection.

This Is the Invitation

Some of you are still standing in that dark place.

You’ve buried something.

Lost something.

Watched something fall apart.

And it feels like even your last bit of hope is gone.

But Easter says this:

You don’t have to understand everything… to believe something.

Faith doesn’t wait for full explanation.

It responds to resurrection.

So What Now?

You can’t go back to life before the cross.

But honestly—why would you want to?

Because if death itself has been defeated…

What can actually take you out now?

Hope isn’t weaker after the cross.

It’s stronger.

It’s been tested.

It’s been buried.

And it came back alive.

One Question

Today, the question isn’t:

“Do you understand everything about God?”

It’s this:

Have you seen enough to believe?

Because Jesus is alive.

And He’s already on the other side of what you’re walking through.

And He’s inviting you forward.

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You get up. Go to work. Pay your bills. Handle your business. Keep your head down. Try not to make a mess of things. And if something does break—your truck, your marriage, your finances, your faith—you just figure out how to live with it.

That’s how the world works.

And then Jesus shows up… and messes all of that up.

The Kind of Miracle That Offends People

In John 11, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Not almost dead. Not “barely hanging on.”

Dead. Four days dead.

The kind of dead where people have already grieved, cried, buried, and started figuring out how to move on.

And here’s what gets me—Jesus waited.

He heard Lazarus was sick… and didn’t rush in like a hero. Didn’t sprint to fix it. Didn’t do what we would expect a “good friend” to do.

He let it die.

That bothers us.

Because if we’re honest, we’ve all had moments where we said:

• “Jesus, if You had shown up earlier…”

• “If only You had done something…”

• “If only You didn’t wait…”

That’s real life. That’s raw faith. That’s where Martha and Mary were standing—next to a grave, full of disappointment.

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Jesus Isn’t Just Late—He’s Doing Something Bigger

Martha basically tells Jesus, “You missed it.”

And you can hear it in her voice: It’s too far gone now.

But here’s the truth most of us don’t want to hear:

We don’t just doubt God’s timing…
We doubt His ability to do anything right now.

We believe He used to move.
We believe He might move later.
But in the middle of the mess?
We assume it’s over.

Jesus looks at her and basically says:
“You’re not dealing with a missed moment… you’re dealing with Me. And I am the resurrection.”

Not “I bring resurrection.”
Not “I know about resurrection.”

I am resurrection.

Jesus Will Step Into Your Pain—But He Won’t Leave It Alone

Before Jesus raises Lazarus, He does something that surprises everyone:

He weeps.

Not a polite tear. Not a quiet sniffle.

He breaks down.

Which means this—when your life falls apart, Jesus isn’t distant.

He’s not standing back saying, “Well, you should’ve had more faith.”

He’s right there in it. Feeling it. Carrying it.

• When life crushes you, He feels it.

• When injustice makes your blood boil—He sees it.

• When your heart breaks—He’s not ignoring it.

He weeps.

But don’t miss this:

Jesus will sit with your pain… but He refuses to leave things dead.

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“Roll the Stone Away”

Then comes the moment.

Jesus walks up to the tomb and says something that sounds completely unreasonable:

“Roll the stone away.”

And everybody pushes back.

• “Jesus… it’s gonna stink.”

• “Jesus… it’s been too long.”

• “Jesus… that’s not how this works.”

And honestly, we do the exact same thing.

Jesus says:

• “Forgive them.”
  We say: Not them.

Jesus says:

• “Love your enemies.”
  We say: Let’s be realistic.

Jesus says:

• “Trust me.”
  We say: Let me think about it.

Jesus says:

• “Open that thing you buried.”
  We say: No thanks. That part of my life is done.

We’d rather manage death than believe for resurrection.

Here’s the Problem: Jesus Doesn’t Take Votes

Nobody at that tomb believed this was a good idea.

Not Martha.
Not Mary.
Not the crowd.
Not the religious people.

And it didn’t matter.

Because Jesus isn’t asking for consensus.
He’s not running a committee meeting.

He’s about to bring something dead back to life.

And here’s the line you need to hear:

Jesus will resurrect things—regardless of who it upsets.

Because when dead things come back to life:

• It comforts the broken

• But it threatens the comfortable

That’s why right after this miracle, people started plotting to kill Him.

Resurrection disrupts systems.
It exposes control.
It proves that God—not people—has the final say.

When Jesus Calls Your Name

Jesus prays.
Then He shouts:

“Lazarus, come out!”

And a dead man walks out of a grave.

Wrapped up. Bound up. But alive.

And I can’t help but think—what if Lazarus had stayed in there?

What if he thought, “Nah… I’ve been dead too long.”

But he didn’t.

He responded.

So What About You?

What have you buried?

• A dream?

• A calling?

• Your faith?

• Your joy?

• Your marriage?

• Your hope?

And you’ve already made peace with it. You’ve moved on.

You’ve told yourself:
“It is what it is.”
“Too far gone.”
“Wouldn’t work anyway.”

And Jesus is standing there saying:

“Roll the stone away.”

Yeah—it might stink.
Yeah—it might be uncomfortable.
Yeah—it might shake things up.

But He’s not intimidated by dead things.

Final Thought

You don’t need a perfect past.
You don’t need cleaned-up emotions.
You don’t need to have it all figured out.

You just need to respond when He calls.

Because Jesus is still in the business of resurrection.

And He’s not waiting on approval.

He’s bringing dead things back to life—whether it fits your timeline or not… and whether it makes people comfortable or not.

So if you hear His voice today—

Do whatever he says. There’s resurrection power in that voice.

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Think about a precious newborn baby, all sweetness and wide-eyed wonder. But when that same baby develops an ear infection, something shifts. The discomfort transforms the child completely. What’s within totally changes what comes out. This isn’t just true for babies. It’s true for all of us.

The Pressure We’re All Feeling

Let’s be honest: we’re stressed out. If you’ve “lost it” this week, you’re not alone. A quick search reveals what Americans are most anxious about: inflation, cost of living, personal finances, politics, crime and safety, health concerns, the future of our nation, and anxiety management itself. The list is exhausting just to read.

We’re living in a time when circumstances seem to control us rather than the other way around. Uncertainty doesn’t come in waves anymore—it feels like a flood that never recedes. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: Christians, who supposedly possess the secret to peace and contentment, are often among the most anxious people around.

Beyond Bumper Sticker Theology

“Faith over Fear” became a popular mantra, especially for political manipulation. But let’s be real—this surface-level statement often has a shelf life of about five minutes when a real crisis hits. We need more than catchy phrases. We need something that works when we’re staring down the giants in our lives, when trauma becomes our daily reality.

The Bible isn’t someone else’s story. It’s your story, right now. Those Old Testament accounts—the Red Sea crossing, David slaying Goliath—these aren’t just ancient metaphors. They’re testimonies about the God we serve and His power, available to us today.

So what happens when everything feels like hell? What comes out when you’re squeezed?

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“The Secret of Contentment”

The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Philippi from an ancient prison—not a cell with three meals a day, but essentially a sewer in the ground, downhill from everything, catching all the crap refuse. Yet in this four-chapter letter, Paul uses the word “joy” eleven times. Five times he tells Christians to be joy-filled, to rejoice.

Let that sink in. A man in a literal sewer is writing about joy.

Here’s what he wrote:

”I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
(Philippians 4:10-12)

The word “content” is fascinating. Its root connects to satisfaction and to substance—what’s contained within. Contentment is when what’s contained within brings satisfaction. Using the example from the beginning of this piece, contentment can be something that is SQUEEZED out.

Paul speaks of learning a “secret.” In his culture, mystery religions and pagan cults kept their practices hidden from outsiders. By using this language, Paul is saying he’s been initiated into something—the cult of contentment. But what secrets have we been initiated into? What have we trusted to satisfy us? Social media with its filtered reality? Career promotions? Material success?

The Most Misused Verse

Then comes one of the most quoted—and most misinterpreted—verses in Scripture:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)

This verse has been wrapped around personal desires, posted as motivation for landing that job, and turned into a prosperity promise. But read in context, it means something far deeper: “I can be content in any and every situation through the One who is my power and strength.”

The secret isn’t about getting whatever we want with God’s help. The secret is Christ Himself. Through Christ. In Christ.

What’s Really Inside?

Paul’s experience of Christ transformed everything. In Philippians 2, he describes Jesus’s humility and sacrifice. In chapter 3, he lists his impressive credentials—then declares them worthless compared to knowing Christ. Something in Jesus was so life-giving, so powerful, that everything else became secondary.

Before revealing his secret, Paul writes:

“Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:4-7)

This isn’t just ancient history. The Bible is true not only because it happened, but because it continues to happen. The “through Christ” part is fluid, present, and active.

The Paradox of Contentment

Here’s something remarkable: being content with our circumstances may actually be what allows us to be discontent with the right things. Paul endured prison and faced death for preaching the gospel. He didn’t do that because he was satisfied with the world as it was. He was deeply discontent with injustice, with people suffering, with souls lost.

When Christ’s love transforms us, it turns our eyes from ourselves onto others. We become less focused on our own situations and more stirred by justice issues—people without food, without help, without hope.

The question becomes: What is your discontentment stirred up about? Are you wasting energy on things that don’t matter, leaving nothing for the things that do?

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Practical Contentment

Close your eyes for a moment. Take time to reflect. What are you anxious about right now? What’s inside you when you’re squeezed? Is it concern for yourself, or concern for others?

The Scripture reminds us: “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” (Philippians 4:8)

Then comes the practical action: “Keep putting into practice all you learned and received...Then the God of peace will be with you.”

Christians practice hope in active ways. Schedule time for prayer—set it as a rhythm in your life. Sit, breathe, pray, listen. Even if all you can do is repeat the Lord’s Prayer, start there.

Then ask: What’s one action I can take that will invoke hope? How can I be the hands and feet of Jesus to my neighbor, my community?

What’s inside will come out. The question is: what are you filling yourself with? When life squeezes you—and it will—may what pours out be the peace, joy, and love of Christ that surpasses all understanding.

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I used to print this out in full and hand it out on the Sunday before MLK Day. I may start back. We need the provocation. We need to listen. We need to be willing to sit in the uncomfortable silence that is the Holy Spirit at work, rather than speed to applaud and fill the space with noise.

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While in jail for participating in the Birmingham desegregation campaign, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began writing what became known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on April 16, 1963. In this rare and direct response to his critics, Dr. King defended the actions of the Birmingham protesters, questioned the role of white moderates and southern faith leaders in the civil rights movement, and expounded on the intended consequences of non-violent resistance. Although initially addressed to eight “liberal” Alabama clergymen, the letter gained a wider audience once published in the June editions of Christian Century magazine and Atlantic Monthly.

In his letter, Dr. King insisted on the need for immediate racial change and the absolute necessity of protest until change occurred. He called on leaders in the southern church to actively support social reform. As you read the excerpts below, notice King’s focus on the role of the individual in combating racism and the legal segregation that then existed in the South.

Source: “Letter from Birmingham Jail’” The Christian Century: An Ecumenical Weekly, June 12, 1963, 767-773.

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. . . But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some 85 affiliate organizations all across the South . . . . Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented . . . .

II

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist, negotiation, self-purification and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. . . Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is widely known. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then last September came the opportunity last September to talk with the leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations certain promises were made by the merchants—for example, the promise to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to call a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained.

As in so many experiences in the past, our hopes had been blasted, and our disappointment was keenly felt. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to take a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?”. . . .

III

You may well ask, “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. . . .

. . . My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “Never.” As on of distinguished jurists once said “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

IV

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title of “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

. . . .

VI

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods”; who paternistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. . . .

VII

You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation, and of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible “devil”. . . .

VIII

. . . The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on—and try to understand why must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek ominous expression through violence; that is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. . . .

IX

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and with deep moral concern would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshippers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare “Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice I have heard many ministers say, “Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern,” and I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which made a strange unbiblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular. . . .

. . .

XIII

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader, but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty.

Amen. Thank you, Dr. King.

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Not that anything new was said, I just had really expected my generation to be better than the last.

She talked about the standard drama stuff with school, the petty, self-indulgent kind of things you expect from others who haven’t yet learned how to be a friend.

And she talked of teachers, other adults, and the like. They all had something in common.

They all went to church. They all vote (or would vote) the same way. They all had some kitchy phrase sewn, etched, or bedazzled (ok, prob not) on a product from an eager Etsy seller. You know, something that takes a cliché and makes it feel like this piece of fabric, sticker, whatever—this thing displays an original thought.

You know, something like, “Live, Laugh, Love.”

Everyone knows it isn’t original (or even very real), but they pawn and smile when they see it because it’s permission to play in their world. It’s nice enough.

And then she said it. “I just wish these people knew that they could choose kindness. Like, it’s a real option. You don’t even have to be a Christian to be kind. But they all say they’re Christians. I just wish the Christians knew they could be kind.”

At this point, dear reader, you’re probably asking— what in the world did they do? What mean-spirited thing was said? And that’s the damning thing of it all— it wasn’t words so much as action.

It was a roll of the eyes and a snicker when a certain person walked into the room.

It was an arrogant certainty about border control.

It was an overzealous reliance on their parents’ (or whichever echo chamber) opinions that seemed to foster a critical mass against anyone who thinks differently, regardless of unsupported data.

It was a closing of the friend circle when someone broke the unwritten rules.

It was an absence of grace. Grace had been choked out long ago by the fun of shame.

And I lamented again—this isn’t a teenage-drama problem. This isn’t a generational thing as I had hoped. This is who we’ve become, whether we believe in it or not. We’ve collectively given in to the fear. And we’ve built our own walls among our groups.

But there is hope. There is a way to break it down. We can embody the Christ in these moments of conditioned response. We can rebel. We can disrupt it all.

We can choose to be kind.

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Interrupting perspectives with no pushback

Imitating authority, demanding allegiance

Intoxicated by a loud version of morality, or spirituality, or whatever

Impressed when our biases are confirmed

Imagination suppressed-- fear stoked

Itching for resolve, we collapse into an echo chamber

Insulated, protected, we feel safe

It’s all the same

In a turn of phrase that feels biblical,

Injecting their poison, Newly and Bricusse wrote in 1971,

“If you want to view paradise, Simply look around and view it...”

Infected by this tiny virus called curiosity

(It’s the healthiest sickness I could’ve hoped for)

I’ve been forever marked with

Impressive bite marks that still swell red 40+ years later.

Instructing me, no,

Imploring me

To be curious. Ask questions. Talk back.

Seek perspective. Don’t be told how to think.

And it’s served me well. I hope I never get better.

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The ones in front of me were the first to be named: one, two, three...

And then I looked to the right, and the left.

Four, five six...

I got to eleven before it became overwhelming.

There were too many waves. Coming to shore way too fast for me to catch.

I sat there in silence; I knew I couldn’t count the waves.

And I heard the voice say,

“Yeah, this is my focus on you.

This is how small you are in front of my crashing love.

Wave after wave, up and down the shore, dwarfing you.

Enjoy.”

And I did. I enjoyed it. I felt the tears of surprised gratitude circle my eyes.

And I sat there. Overwhelmed.

And started counting the waves again.

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This past week broke my heart. It sucked.

When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to say the word I that I just used there, but words sometimes fail us, and silence feels worse. I look at my children and I don’t have tidy answers for murder, terror, or the sudden, ordinary fear that no one is safe. We have grown sadly familiar with tragic headlines — 9/11, Katrina, Charlottesville, COVID — but familiarity must never become acceptance. I pray we never grow used to evil.

As your pastor, I want to speak plainly and pastorally to remind you of a few things. I know how quickly strong opinions can splinter a church family. I also know how fear can keep us from saying or doing what we should: fear of saying the wrong thing, or not saying enough, or not being strong enough. But fear is never the path God calls us to. Fear always keeps us from the best things in the Kingdom of God. So, what do I feel, after much prayer, that we need to be reminded of? Well, here goes...

1. Evil is real — and so is the power of Christ.
   What we saw this week was not merely bad behavior; it exposed a brokenness and a spiritual darkness that wounds our world. But we serve a Savior who meets that darkness. When Christ cast out demons, there was a pattern: the demonic activity was most violent right before the casting out. I am holding on to the Christ that can save us, and I point you in that direction. I pray for a holy exorcism of evil that claims one person has more value than another. Discrimination and hatred do not exist in God's Kingdom. I pray for a cleansing mercy in our land and in our hearts — a holy reckoning that the lie “one person is worth less” be undone. In God’s kingdom, there is no place for hatred or discrimination.

2. The church is the image of Jesus in this world...or it isn't the church of Jesus. Together, we bear not only the image of Christ, but the power of the Holy Spirit within us. While the darkness and the evil have real effects, it does not diminish our calling. No, we worship in defiance. The highest form of worship that we can give is to show up, refuse to sit quietly, and love loudly. We are a hub of hope for people in this community and around the world. The church is a safe place for the oppressed, the depressed, and the possessed. We are the freedom champions: freedom from sin, hate, anger, depression, sickness, rejection, and denial. We are not small-minded or ashamed of who we are in Christ. We are the image bearers of Christ, inflicting this world with acceptance and understanding, with an outward focus of love and respect for everyone; with an attraction, an appetite to find the kids in the lunchroom who have been made fun of and invite them to our table. We bring dignity to people.

3. Nothing — not politics, nationality, job, or ideology — must come before Christ. If anything stands between you and complete submission to Jesus, hear this as an invitation to repentance. The church is a place of welcome, but also of honest conviction: we will love you through your struggle, and we will pray for you, and we will ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into surrender. The gospel is not neutral; it is disruptive. We follow Jesus before any empire, party, or agenda. If your politics, or your job, or your nationalism, or anything else comes before being a fully devoted follower of Jesus, repent. Turn from that false gospel.

So what do we do now? Here are a few things to pray through and see what the Spirit says to you:

• If you follow Jesus, go all in. Stop playing it safe. Let your life be shaped by God’s story more than comfort, reputation, or fear. Find your place to serve, take a step to grow in faith, and let God give you courage through purpose.

• If you’re not a follower of Jesus, keep coming. Let us love you well. Come as you are and let this community welcome and care for you. You are not here by accident — you are why we exist.

• If you are a long-time believer who’s grown weary, pray with intensity and obey boldly the next thing God puts in front of you. There is resurrection for passion; worship can be your protest against the powers of despair. Sing, serve, and let obedience rekindle the flame.

We will grieve together. We will not trade our worship for fear or for any cause that contradicts Christ. We will stand for dignity, justice, and love. We will keep pointing to Jesus.

I love you, AFA. We will walk through this season together — grieving, praying, and refusing to let evil have the last word.

Your fellow image bearer,
Pastor Nate