Listen to the unabridged sermon here: Eyes Forward

Don’t look back in shame, don’t look sideways in comparison — look forward into eternity as we follow Christ

We have made it. We are here at the end of John chapter twenty-one — our nineteenth week in the Gospel of John. We’re going to put the final touches on this Gospel.

And the nice thing about a last sermon is that we just get to touch on some really simple, easy things brought to the fore here in these last few verses of John. We’re just going to deal with shame, comparison, and eternity. No big deal. Just small little things.

To listen to the whole unabridged class: Wonder and Gratitude

Beyond Sunday School — The Ragamuffin Gospel, chapters 5 and 6

When was the last time something ordinary stopped you right in your tracks?

Not a polite “oh, that’s kind of cool,” but a real wow. You just had to stand there and take it in.

Listen to the unabridged sermon here: Breakfast on the Beach

Ordinary guys, ordinary work, and the extraordinary holiness of abiding in Christ

We are coming to the end now in our study of the Gospel of John. This is our penultimate message in the series. I just like saying penultimate. I think that’s a cool word.

So we’ve got this week and next, and then we will somehow have finished this entire Gospel in about nineteen weeks. Not too shabby, I suppose. And you have persevered well through it.

We pick it up in chapter 21, the last chapter — and scholars wrestle with it, because John’s Gospel really seems like it should have ended at chapter 20: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” Done. Finished. Great job, John.

LIsten to the unabridged audio here: Tilted Halos

What happens when we stop keeping our halos on too tight

Beyond Sunday School — The Ragamuffin Gospel, chapters 3 and 4

I still crack up at where Brennan Manning says the phrase “ragamuffin gospel” came from.

He overheard some valley girls talking, and one of them said something like, “Like, Jesus is totally intense — dying for ragamuffins and all.”

I can hear it in my head. Maybe I have watched Legally Blonde too many times, but I can hear it.

And yet, for all the comedy in that, Manning is getting at something deadly serious. We are rooted — absolutely rooted — in the necessity of grace.

How we miss the presence of Christ in our grief — and how He meets us there anyway

Listen to the unabridged sermon here: Believing is Seeing

Happy Easter.

Yes, I know it’s October. But here we are, in John chapter 20, on Easter morning — which is as good a reminder as any that you don’t need the church calendar to tell you to celebrate the risen Christ. Really, we should probably reorient ourselves to think of every Sunday as Easter Sunday. As Resurrection Sunday.

LIsten to the unabridged audio here: Grace, Drunk Straight

This week in Beyond Sunday School we dove into the first two chapters of Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel: chapter one, “Something Is Radically Wrong,” and chapter two, “The Magnificent Monotony.” I have to say, I deeply appreciate a preacher who can nail the alliteration. Magnificent monotony. That’s good work.

I opened the session with a question, and I’ll ask it of you too: When you hear the word grace, what do you know is true — and what is still hard to trust?

The room answered fast. It’s free. You don’t have to do anything to gain it. And that, frankly, is the part that’s hardest to accept. Someone else added: grace is for everybody. Which drew an honest nod, because if we’re telling the truth, most of us would prefer it weren’t.

Listen to the unabridged sermon here: Believing is Seeing and Believing is Life - The King We Need

Have you ever listened to a song or hymn that ends on an unresolved note? Unlike many traditional hymns that finish on a bright, major chord leaving you with a sense of simple happiness, certain songs refuse to resolve so easily. There is something profoundly honest about that. While the sacrifice of Christ is finished—once and for all—our daily walk in response to that salvation is ongoing, calling us into something deeper.

That unresolved tension is precisely what we encounter in John 18 and 19. As we trace the events of Jesus’ final night—from his betrayal in the garden to his trial and eventual execution—we come face-to-face with a stark reality: the King we need is rarely the King we want.

What does faith look like on the other side of deconstruction? In the season finale of The Pastor Next Door, we explore the characteristics of a mature, resilient faith—one defined not by rigid certainty or heroic arrogance, but by humility, deep love, and a steady hope that holds room for mystery and doubt.

When we let go of the need for easy answers, we discover that what truly survives deconstruction is Christ at the center.