This may be our last Sabbatical update- we'll see how I feel about writing another one of these a couple of weeks from now, because by then our return will be just around the corner. It’s crazy that our time in Europe is coming to a close and that in a few weeks we’ll be back with all of you!

After my last update, we spent one more week in Italy, mainly in a small little town called Chioggia. It’s across the lagoon from Venice and is nicknamed “little Venice” because of a few canals that run through the town, abounding with little pedestrian bridges. We really enjoyed our days there, including a day trip to Venice. I had heard some very divided opinions about that city, but our family is definitely on the “pro” side of the debate. It’s an incredible place and we felt we could have spent many more days there. After Chioggia, we had three straight travel days- one to get to a hotel near the airport in Milan, the next to fly to Athens and drive a short distance to an Airbnb we had booked, and then a third to drive the 5 hours or so up to Thessaloniki. We’ve spent the last week or so here in this beautiful city.

There’s a lot to say, but the short of it is that this is the part of our trip where the Bible has become most alive. In the heart of modern Thessaloniki (an extremely vibrant city, the second biggest city in Greek, and a cultural capital of Europe as a whole) is the ancient Roman Forum, right along the Via Egnatia (an ancient street that Paul traveled on and is now a modern thoroughfare running through Thessaloniki). You can walk around the outside of the forum and see the ruins in broad daylight. The first day our family did this, we read the story from Acts 17:1-9 where Paul’s preaching incites a riot in the marketplace, resulting in Jason being dragged from his home before the authorities. We imagined it all taking place in front of us, which was powerful. Zachary even decided which nearby home would have been Jason’s. Who says it wasn’t?

A couple of days later, we did a little road trip out to two nearby sights: Vergina and Berea (modern Veria). The Royal Tombs of Vergina is an amazing little museum that plays host to a groundbreaking discovery made within the last century. The tombs of Philip II of Macedonia (the father of Alexander the Great) as well as Alexander’s son were found there. You can walk down in the ground and see the tombs themselves- massive structures and ornately decorated. You can also see all the loot that was discovered within the tombs- crowns, swords, armor, gold, and so on. We then walked up to the remains of the ancient Macedonian palace. It was incredible to think about how this little village in northern Greece was where Alexander the Great grew up and was crowned king, and thus the place Greek civilization reached the world from. Our New Testament was originally written in Greek because Greek was the “lingua franca” language of the Roman Empire of the day- something that is true because of Alexander’s influence hundreds of years before.

From Vergina, it was a 15 minute drive to Berea. The main destination for us there was the Jewish synagogue, which purportedly stands in the same place as the one 2000 years ago when Paul visited the city (Acts 17:10-15). As we neared the site, a man standing outside a souvenir shop greeted us. That’s not uncommon at all, especially in Greece where people seem to be especially friendly. When asked where we were from, we said Canada, and he replied “I’m going to Canada next year! My family is going to be helping out at a Christian camp in New York, and we’ll be flying into Montreal!” It turns out that this man, Giannis, is a pastor at a small little Pentecostal church that meets about 50 meters away from the old Jewish synagogue. Their church is only about 15 people, but they own this little space right next to where Christianity first came to the city. They opened up the souvenir shop as an outreach, allowing them to give out little New Testaments (both English and Greek), each with a note about where to find the Berea story in Acts. Giannis told us that the synagogue itself has only functioned as a museum for years and that there’s only one Jewish family remaining in Berea (most were taken to Auschwitz in WWII). In terms of the Christian population, Giannis told us how almost nobody attends the many Greek Orthodox churches in the country besides at Christmas and Easter. The evangelical population in the country numbers between 5,000 and 10,000 (out of 10 million people in Greece) and are seen by many as a cult, in the same boat as Jehovah’s Witnesses. We thank God for their church’s presence, for their love for their city, and we pray that their many interactions would bear Gospel fruit despite the metaphorical hard ground!

The next day, Sunday, we were finally able to attend church in person again. There’s a small evangelical church called Zoe Church that meets about 100 meters from the Thessalonian forum (isn’t it incredible that these two little churches have been given spaces so close to where the Gospel was first preached in their cities?). It was a bilingual service, everything sung and spoken in both English and Greek. We had an amazing time with this incredibly warm and alive church and learned even more about Christian faith in Greece. For example, we learned that it is against the law to proselytize minors, presenting even more challenges for evangelical churches and their outreach. No Christian summer camps for these guys! However, Zoe Church has been able to purchase new space in Thessaloniki and are planning on moving into it in a couple of months, with more room to welcome visitors and preach the Gospel. We were so refreshed by our time with them.

The final update for this post is that yesterday (Monday) we did the 2 hour drive to ancient Philippi. On the way there, we took the general route that Paul would have traveled. That took us through Apollonia, Amphipolis, and Neapolis (modern day Kavala), described in Acts 16:11 and 17:1. Philippi was one of the kids’ highlights from the whole trip so far, especially since the story in Acts 16:16-40 is Zachary’s favorite in the Bible. In Philippi, you first walk through the well-preserved theatre and then into the old forum (the center of life for any ancient Roman city), including its marketplace. These are the places Paul and Silas would have rebuked the demonic presence in the slave girl and subsequently been dragged before the city magistrates and beaten. There’s also a little cell just off the forum that is labelled “Paul’s prison”. There’s a possibility this is where Paul and Silas would have been imprisoned. We read that part of the story in Acts 16 as we gathered near the cell and were in awe of Paul and Silas’ Spirit-given boldness in that place. We even sang the doxology to try to replicate their singing of praises (though in much easier circumstances). From there, we drove up the road a couple of minutes to the site by the Krenides River that many believe was the location of Lydia’s baptism. Once again, we read that story in its original location and imagined it happening before us. What a gift to be able to do that! There’s also a little Greek Orthodox baptistery nearby filled with depictions of Paul and Silas’ visit to Philippi. We tested out the acoustics of the place with another rendition of the doxology. It was an incredible day!

In terms of our travel plans, we’re in Thessaloniki for another couple of days and then will travel to Meteora for a day of climbing up to old monasteries (Google it if you’ve never heard of Meteora- wow!). After that it’s Corinth for Easter Weekend- even the evangelical churches here align with the Orthodox calendar, which will be celebrating Easter this weekend instead of last.

We were praying for our church lots last week and trust that it was a Spirit-filled week of prayer, worship, and sharing of the good news of Jesus. We praise God for His work among us all, whether in the ups or downs of life. He is good and He’s got us in His hands. We look forward to being with you again in less than a month!

In Christ,

Craig, Carolyn, Natalie and Zachary

This is update #5 on our sabbatical adventure, and it’s probably the most action packed yet! It also begins and ends with Bridge people hangouts, plus a surprise Bridge cameo in the middle. Here we go!

The day after my last update (two weeks ago), we spent a day in Rome with Rene and Sarah Breuel, missionaries that The Bridge Church supports. Years ago, Rene was the youth pastor at The Bridge while completing his masters degree at Regent College. For the last 15 years, he and Sarah have led Chiesa Hopera, a church they planted in Rome. It was such a joy to spend the day with them. They took us to some catacombs outside the old city walls where many Christians had buried their dead in the first few centuries AD. It was spine-tingling to traverse these deep underground tombs and see some of the imagery that believers had inscribed there- a dove, a fish, a shepherd with sheep, and so on. The other major highlight of the day was a visit to the Mamertine Prison. This prison dates back to the 7th century BC, near the beginning of Rome’s existence. It’s located at the far end of the Roman Forum and was where high profile criminals were kept before execution. There’s a good chance that both Peter and Paul were incarcerated there before their martyrdoms and a chapel has been built on top of the site in memory. Rene read part of 2 Timothy for us during our visit, a letter that Paul may have written in this prison. If the catacombs were spine-tingling, I don’t know how to describe this experience. It was incredibly powerful to think about Paul sitting in that tiny, dank cell, with a small opening in the ceiling above, writing words like, “for I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” It was one more testimony to the God-given, Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered resilience of the early church in the face of persecution.

Of course, it wasn’t just where we went that was a highlight but who we got to spend it with. Rene and Sarah are two of the most Spirit-filled, humble, whole-hearted servants of the Lord we know. It was an honor to get to know them better. We know they love our church and they were excited to hear about the good things God has done at The Bridge.

I’ll mention one other highlight from Rome, which was visiting the Basilica of St. John Lateran. This church lays claim to perhaps being the oldest church building in the world. It was given to the church in Rome by Constantine in the early 4th century, and the baptistery dates back to the 5th century. To think about Christians being baptized there 1600 years ago and reading the words surrounding the baptistery reminding new believers what their action meant was another moving experience.

From Rome we traveled three hours south to Salerno and spent a few days there. One day was a trip to the Amalfi Coast, one of the most spectacular settings I’ve witnessed. Another day had us in Pompei, the ancient city that was buried by Mt. Vesuvius’ explosion in 79 A.D. While exploring the Forum there (the main center of an ancient city with temples and public spaces surrounding it), we heard my name being shouted out. We turned to see Kimyi and Ivy and their kids (an amazing family from The Bridge). We had no clue they were going to be in Italy! I don’t know what the odds are that we’d be in Pompei on the same day and that we’d run into each other while there (it’s a huge site!), but I think they’d be pretty slim. It was so encouraging to see them and hear a quick update about how our church is doing. Pompei itself was a place I could have spent many more hours in. There are homes and structures there that provide the most complete representation we have of what 1st century life would have looked like. While the Forum in Rome gives a glimpse into the rich and famous of that world, Pompei is a window into the everyday man and woman.

Carolyn’s parents had been with us for two and a half weeks at that point and departed home after our time in Salerno. To have them with us was such a blessing, and much credit to them for keeping up with us! From Salerno, we headed north to a beautiful little town called Viareggio, right on the Tuscany coast. We’ve been here for a week and are preparing to take a train tomorrow morning to our next stop. After weeks of non-stop sightseeing, the last week has been a refreshing break. We’ve done a couple of short day trips to towns like Lucca and Pisa, but there’s also been plenty of opportunity to go for walks, play games, and for me to write. Here’s the good news: I’ve completed the draft of my book manuscript! I’ve sent it off to the people who will read it and give me feedback so I can incorporate it all into my dissertation. Before you get too excited, I still have my dissertation to write. It will be shorter than my book manuscript and based on the same research, but much more academic (and therefore much less fun). I’m hoping to get a significant amount of it done by the end of the sabbatical, but am thrilled that at least the book manuscript part of the doctoral project is completed (mostly).

Today, however, was not a relaxing, do-nothing day: it will go down as one of the absolute highlights of our trip. In the morning we took a train to Monterosso, a town in the Cinque Terre region of Italy, and met another family from The Bridge: Nathan and Denise with their kids. This rendezvous wasn’t a surprise, it had been planned months in advance. It was so refreshing and fun to hang out with them. We saw all five towns of the Cinque Terre, most of it by hiking. What an incredible walk and what incredible company to do it with. I could try to describe it, but pictures will do a better job. Top it all off with gelato and pizza while watching the sun set over the Mediterranean and it can’t get much better.

Despite all the incredible things we’ve been able to see and do here in Europe, our conversations as a family have turned more and more to how much we miss home. We miss our church and can’t wait to be back with you worshiping together again. We pray for you regularly and were so glad to hear from Nathan and Denise that the Lord continues to work in powerful ways among you all! We’re excited for our upcoming month in Greece, but we’re also excited for the day we fly back home and settle into life there once again. We love you and are grateful for your prayers!

In Christ,

Craig, Carolyn, Natalie, and Zachary

It’s been a few weeks since I made one of these updates, I know. We spent one last week and a half in Alcossebre, were mostly off-line for a week travelling around the Mediterranean, and now have been in Rome for a few days. So there’s a bit to catch up on!

Alcossebre really was a perfect place for us to be based for a month, especially for writing purposes. I was able to write 7 out of 9 chapters of my book in the last few weeks there- only two more chapters to go! Thank you for all your prayers for that. Our family went for so many walks and explored so much of the surrounding area. One highlight was the Caves of St. Joseph outside of Valencia, part of Europe’s longest navigable underground river. It was spectacular to ride a little rowboat through these illuminated underground caves. It struck us how God’s beauty and majesty in creation is everywhere, even in places you had no idea existed because they’re out of sight! Another highlight was being invited over for a meal with a family we met from La Roca Church, the church we attended for three consecutive Sundays. Even though they knew we were only there short-term, they blessed us with the gift of hospitality. To hear their testimonies and spend the afternoon learning more about Spanish culture was such a blessing (and for me, to exercise my competitive juices and win a lot of ping-pong games was also a blessing).

We’ve now been in Italy for nearly a week, the last few of them in Rome. I love this culture and this language. I’m determined to learn Italian some day, so Seb, I’m signing up for lessons with you when I’m back! The last couple of days in Rome have been jam packed. One day was our Vatican day. We toured through the museums and saw some of the most famous pieces of art in the world, including the Sistine Chapel. We then walked over to St. Peter’s Basilica where we climbed the 500+ steps to the top of the dome (they charge you for this. 10 Euros a person. For walking up steps. These places rake in the money.) That may have been the most stunning church building I’ve ever set foot in, even more than the Familia Sagrada. The scale is mind boggling. Everything is massive. And then to think that we might have been 30 feet or so away from whatever remains of Peter’s body! (Of course, there’s plenty of debate about whether this is the spot, but there’s a chance that it’s where he was buried. I’m taking the mindset that if there’s a realistic possibility and people have traditionally located it there, I’ll just go with it.)

Near to where Peter’s body might lie are coffins of all kinds of past popes. Something that hits you when you hear stories about popes from the middle ages is how needed reformation really was. There were the Medici popes, a powerful family in Florence who worked their way into ecclesiastical authority even as these popes were siring children with numerous women. As we toured the Vatican, we saw entire rooms in areas that popes once lived in that were devoted to this or that artist. Can you imagine having someone over and saying, “this Bernini room is boring. Let’s sit down and have coffee in my Rafael room!” There’s an entire hall just for ornate, gigantic maps! And I don’t mean a hallway like downstairs at The Bridge, I mean a hallway that is 120 meters long. Just to show off their maps! St. Peter’s Basilica itself was built partly by the practice of indulgences, which allowed people to pay amounts of money in return for forgiveness of sins. I’m just going to go ahead and say, that’s not very biblical. These popes also collected pagan statues of Greek and Roman gods. Michaelangelo even modeled his depictions of Jesus in the Sistine Chapel on some of these idols. That hit me because the Christians in the first few centuries were hyper-sensitive about idolatry. They truly fled from idolatry. Apparently the church of the middle ages no longer felt so strongly about that. Like I said, we can thank the Lord that He raised up men and women to call the church back to faithfulness in those days, and that He does that in every generation.

Some of the churches we’ve seen in Italy and Spain have been incredible in terms of their size, beauty, architectural ingenuity, and so on. However, personally, I’ve experienced little of God’s presence in these places. I know that’s subjective. I know that other people might differ on that. I know I’ve mentioned that a bit in previous posts. Today, though, we entered a little church that brought tears to my eyes in a way that none of these majestic cathedrals have. In the Roman Forum, there’s a building called The Church of Santa Maria Antiqua. It dates back to the 5th century, making it one of the oldest church buildings around, covered with early Christian art. I know that in the next couple of days we will see some things that will bring us even closer to the first few centuries, but it was a moving experience to think about a gathering of believers worshiping Jesus 1600 years ago there.

Before all that, our ancient Rome day began with the Colosseum. Emerging from a dirty metro station and being struck by the magnificence of this ancient structure will stick with me for a long time. Imagining what it would have been like to be in the arena as a gladiator or victim reminded me of the courage of the early Christians who often faced death with unparalleled boldness. It also reminded me of the brutality of Roman culture. The city’s mythology itself speaks to that. Legendarily, brothers named Remus and Romulus founded the city but had a disagreement about the exact location. In response, Romulus killed his brother. Similarly, the history of Roman emperors is a history of civil war and betrayal. This was a culture that was all about military might, dominance and conquest. Compassion was not a value for ancient Romans, which explains why watching animals and humans killed could be construed as sport. Apparently, the Colosseum was opened for entertainment in 80 AD with a 100 day festival. 2000 people and 9000 animals were killed during this “party”, requiring employees to spray perfume all over the place to cover up the stench of blood. Again, this is what was considered a “good time”, a distraction for the poverty-stricken masses so they wouldn’t think so much about their misery but instead thank the rich elites for sponsoring the games (unlike today, admission to the Colosseum in those days was free). Is it any wonder Christian faith was so dramatically different? Christian faith shone in that kind of setting. Love and compassion were characteristics that truly set followers of Jesus apart.
 
There’s so much we’ve seen and so much to come! Tomorrow the plan is to hang out with Rene and Sarah Breuel, missionaries here in Rome who our church supports. We also have Carolyn’s parents with us this week and part of next, so we’re experiencing all of this with them. Hopefully along the way the kids will find time to do some school work and I’ll find some time to write- a near impossibility in this last stretch. And of course, we miss you all. I see pictures now and then of people from The Bridge gathering together and my heart immediately fills up. We love you and despite all the excitement here, we can’t wait to be back with you all.

In Christ,
Craig, Carolyn, Natalie, and Zachary

Hi Bridge Church family! Here’s update #3 on our sabbatical adventure.

We’ve been in Alcossebre now for a couple of weeks. If you missed my last update or forgot, this is a small town on the coast of Spain 2.5 hours south of Barcelona and 1.5 hours north of Valencia. It’s relatively unknown, but stunningly beautiful (and very quiet now in the offseason). It has been a tremendous gift from God for us to be able to stay here. We’ve loved exploring the area and doing all kinds of non-typical touristy things. Staying for a month in a place is a very different experience than the usual, “see everything you can as quick as you can because you’re only here for a few days” visit. On most days, we spend the morning and late afternoon doing work (Carolyn leading the kids in homeschooling, and me writing my book) and do some kind of excursion in the afternoon. In terms of my book, I’m happy to say that I’m wrapping up Chapter 4 (out of 9). Overall, I’m very grateful for the progress I’ve made and the pace it’s going. We’ve also been watching a bunch of Olympics, though we’ve only got access to European channels. We’ve learned that the British commentators for all the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events are perhaps the most entertaining commentators in the history of television, and that German commentators are extremely excited about sliding events (though we have no idea what they’re saying). Spanish commentators seem profoundly disinterested in winter sports and unimpressed with everything they see on ice.

Although it’s been a relatively chill time here (not meaning the weather, which has been very warm, but the pace- which will change when we start the Italy and Greece legs of our trip in March), there are a few highlights I wanted to share with you. One is our church experience. The first Sunday we were here, we drove all the way to Valencia where there was an English international church. It was good to be with them, but the drive was significant. We decided to look for an evangelical Spanish-speaking church in the area and found one called “La Roca” in the town of Vinaros, which we’ve now joined the last two Sundays. Although I probably only catch 10% of what is said (and the rest of the family is much lower, of course), I’ve been so, so thankful for our time there. We’ve said it reminds us in many ways of The Bridge- similar size and feel. Times of worship have been so powerful. Though the songs are of course in Spanish, they’re all familiar- we’ve sung songs like “Goodness of God”, “How He Loves Us”, and “Do It Again”. (The pre-service music is often straight up English Christian music, featuring Forrest Frank, Toby Mac, and others- a huge highlight for the kids.) For me, joining with other believers for worship and not being the pastor is often so refreshing. I’m not worried about who is or isn’t there, I’m not worried about the lighting or the sound, I’m not thinking about what I’m going to preach, I’m able to be present with the people and most of all with the Lord. Our first Sunday there, one of the ushers figured out we were English speakers and brought someone to interpret the sermon for us. We’ve been so blessed by the service this woman has given us the last two weeks, enabling us to understand what is being taught. The people love one another well and the place is packed. Our default impression of Europe is that it is spiritually dry. This church is anything but that! Pray for La Roca and for its ministry here in Spain.

The other major thing we’ve done the last two weeks is explore a bunch of castles. Nearby to us is the Templar Castle of Xivert. It was a bit of a hike to the top of a ridge, but so worth it. It’s free and open for anyone to explore the castle grounds. Templar Knights, after being expelled from the holy land in the wake of the Crusades, created a base of operations in this area in the middle ages. This castle was one of them. 20 minutes away, on the other side of the nature reserve that Alcossebre borders, is a town called Peniscola. It is one of the most incredible places we’ve visited. On a little spur jutting out from the rest of the town are these old city walls and within that an ancient castle. I had forgotten this history before coming here, but back in the 14th and 15th centuries, there were a number of competing Roman Catholic “popes” at the same time. One of them, a Spanish cleric who went by Benedict XIII, was eventually excommunicated and fled to Peniscola and took up residence in the castle there, where he maintained his claim to be the true pope until his death. When you tour this castle in Peniscola, you see the rooms he would have used for his bedroom, his study, his library, and so on. I’ve got to say, I felt more than a little envy about his office space. And then yesterday, we did a hike to an old watchtower overlooking the sea and the general area. From this tower you can see the castle in Peniscola and a short walk away from it is a view of the Castle of Xivert. Apparently, these were all part of a network of castles and watchtowers that formed a medieval defense system. Those who were stationed there would communicate with each other and keep an eye out for possible threats.

I’m a pastor, so I can’t help but try to draw out an illustration, right? This network reminded me of the body of Christ in various ways. We all have the same goal, but we each have different vantage points. There are certain things we’re able to see that others may not be able to. This is true of individuals, of denominations, of the church throughout history. It’s crucial that in the body of Christ we communicate with each other and alert each other to various pitfalls or dangers. If we cut ourselves off and isolate ourselves, we become much more vulnerable to attacks of various kinds. Maybe you see another illustration or can expand that even further- let me know!

We love you and continue to pray for you often. When we’ve talked about what we miss about home, our church tops the list. We continue to pray that the Lord would keep us all united, that He would fill us with His love, and that He would lead people to Himself through our church. We know that The Bridge is in His strong hands. We are so grateful for your prayers and for the gift that this sabbatical is. Keep praying we will be refreshed, that the Lord would give me the strength and wisdom to complete these writing projects, and that this will be everything He wants it to be.

In Christ,

Craig, Carolyn, Natalie, Zachary

Hi Bridge Church family! As I said in my last post, I’ll try to give you an update on our sabbatical every couple of weeks. However, I won’t take even the slightest offense if, when I come back, I find out you haven’t read any of these. I’ll only take offense if Kevin Bradshaw hasn’t read them, since he’s the one who asked me to do it (which I’m grateful for!).

We flew to Barcelona about a week ago, on Monday the 26th. The first few days were a joyful (?) experience with jet lag: straining to stay awake until 8pm and then starting the day at 2am. Despite that, we were blown away by Barcelona’s beauty. We walked everywhere: almost 15km of walking a day, which the kids were almost entirely good with. There’s so much to see, boredom didn’t really enter into the picture. There were a lot of highlights, but near the top of the list would be visiting the famous Basilica de la Sagrada Familia. This was the magnum opus of the architect Antoni Gaudi. The degree to which I’m ignorant of architecture is revealed in the fact I had never heard of Gaudi until watching a Rick Steves video about Barcelona the week before our trip- but the guy’s legacy is everywhere in this area of Spain! Here’s the incredible thing about this basilica: Gaudi took over the project in 1883, and it’s still not completed. Seriously. Over 140 years and they’re still working on the thing! And to think that some of us felt like getting our church building finished took a lot of time. Apparently Gaudi knew that there was no way the project would be completed in his lifetime, which drove him to complete one part of the building before he died. He figured that if he could accomplish that, it would make it more difficult for the project to be abandoned after he was gone. In reality, he didn’t even make it that far before dying! Regardless, the vision has been carried forward for generations. I think there’s an important illustration there. As Scripture says, we are but vapors, here today and gone tomorrow, while the Lord God is eternal. I want to give my life to something bigger than me, something that will last longer than my short life span. I want to live for the glory of God.

There was so much else that was impressive about the Familia Sagrada. The architecture itself was stunning, the main columns resembling trees and the whole main space meant to evoke a forest. Every aspect of the basilica is intentional. Even the height of the tallest tower is just a little lower than the nearest hill top. Apparently Gaudi wanted to make sure the work of man wasn’t exalted above the work of God. Every image, every inscription, every dimension carries a message of some kind. In that way, it reminds you of the Jerusalem Temple in the Scriptures. Of course, being in a building like that also produces conflicted feelings in someone like me. Yes, it’s beautiful and impressive and bears witness to the Gospel in various ways. Millions of people are seeing that. They’re walking through the building with an audio guide or a human guide and hearing about that biblically-informed intentionality to this structure. God gave us gifts, He gave us artistry and creativity, and an achievement like this is a reflection of His own character. I think there’s good fruit in that. On the other hand, as we talked about our experience afterwards as a family, we thought about how a building like this doesn’t do much to facilitate authentic community. It’s not a home in the way we feel about our own space at The Bridge, a warm and welcoming place where you are going to grow in relationship with others as you encounter God together. For all its glory, a basilica like this- and this would be true of many of the old Catholic church buildings we’ve already seen- seems to be more of a tourist attraction than a place where the living, breathing body of Christ meets together. That’s just my take, feel free to disagree!

After a few days in Barcelona, we rented a car and made the trip down the Spanish coast to a little town called Alcossebre, which will be our home for the next month. First, though, I’ve got to tell you about a city we stopped at on the way, Tarragona. There are a bunch of ruins there dating back to the Roman Empire, even as far back as the first century AD. One of those is a Roman amphitheatre that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Amphitheatres like this were sites for races, animal fights, and gladiator fights. Another use was public executions. In the middle of the third century AD, during a period of incredible tumult in the empire, the Roman Emperor Valerian began persecuting Christians. Tertullian, a Christian leader and thinker from that time (who also wrote a whole tract against amphitheatres and what took place there), complained, “If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, "Away with the Christians to the lion!" That seems to have been Emperor Valerian’s mindset, at least. As a result of this persecution, the bishop of Tarraco (ancient Tarragon) was arrested along with a couple of his deacons. His name is pretty fun: Fructuosus. I say it and I can’t help but think about strawberries. In any case, they were brought to the amphitheatre and burned at the stake there to the delight of a bloodthirsty crowd. Before being executed, Fructuosus was commanded to worship the Roman gods. In response, he is said to have declared: “I worship the one God Who made heaven and earth, and all that is in them”. It was powerful for our whole family to be in a place where an ancient Christian had testified boldly and publicly to the truth of the Gospel, even at the cost of his life.

Later that day, on Friday, we arrived in Alcossebre. There are no cathedrals or Roman ruins here. It’s a small, relatively unknown village on the coast between Barcelona and Valencia. We had found an incredible deal on AirBnB for a month-long stay in what looked like a beautiful apartment. It is everything we hoped it would be and more. I can’t think of a better place to spend this part of our sabbatical. It’s quiet and out of the way, but stunningly beautiful. There are endless trails along the sea, alternating between sandy beaches and rocky coves and inlets. We’ve settled into a routine of work and outdoor exploration. I’m wrapping up my research and reading and am planning on beginning to write my book this week. Carolyn is doing an awesome job of homeschooling the kids and we are so, so grateful for the gift that this place has already been. I’ve been praying that the Lord would refresh me and refresh us during this sabbatical and I can see it happening.

Thank you so much for your prayers for me and for our family. We think about you often and pray for you regularly. We miss you! We were able to drive to Valencia (about an hour and a half away) on Sunday to attend an international church there. It was good to be there, and we could tell that the Lord is at work there. However, nothing compares to being together with our church family at The Bridge! We praise God for the work that He has done and is doing there and we look forward to hearing all about it when we return.

In Christ,

Craig, Carolyn, Natalie, and Zachary

I was asked by a number of people leading up to my sabbatical to keep you all updated on how we’re doing and what we’ve been up to during this time. This might be one of those things where people say “oh let me see the pictures from your trip” to be polite, but are really dying inside. In any case, I will take no offense when I come back and you haven’t read any of these! However, I thought it was a good idea, and it also gives me a good reason to keep a bit of a journal throughout the process. I’ll try to do this more regularly later on in the sabbatical when we’re doing more traveling around Europe.

The sabbatical officially started on January 1, and on that day our family made a trip to Salt Spring Island to visit my sister and her family. We’ve visited Salt Spring many times, but there was something unique about this trip in terms of what the Lord did in my heart. If you know the island, you know that it is characterized by all kinds of “spirituality”. Whenever we go to Salt Spring, we stay with a missionary there who, as a youth pastor, would lead youth service trips to the island before he experienced a call from God to move there full time. I asked him about signs I had seen on previous visits but hadn’t paid much attention to: something about “shamanic breath healing”. He told me that this was a regular, even weekly gathering that brings together more people on Salt Spring than any church on the island, focused on new-age “shamanic” practices. He told me about another church that had declined, closed, and sold its property to some kind of wiccan group. He told me about encounters with people who seemed to have been possessed by evil spirits. There’s a lot going on “spiritually” on Salt Spring! I also had a lengthy conversation with someone else on Salt Spring Island that delved into philosophy and Christian faith. What was interesting in this conversation is that this individual (and I think this would be typical of others there) had no problem believing all kinds of miraculous events in the Bible (and outside the Bible). The biggest stumbling block for him was the exclusivity of Christ. Believing in giants, in people being raised from the dead, that kind of thing? No problem. But the idea that there is something totally unique about Jesus and that salvation comes from him alone? Not a chance. It struck me as I’ve been doing a lot of reading about early Christianity that this was one of the main objections to Christian faith 2000 years ago as well!

Because I wasn’t rushing back to preach that Sunday, we were able to attend a church on Salt Spring for the first time. As far as I know, there’s really one church on the island that is Gospel-oriented and growing with new believers. It’s pastored by someone who grew up on Salt Spring, served with YWAM for about a decade, and now is serving as pastor of this church. As I looked around that Sunday, I saw many people, including a bunch of young families, that look like Salt Spring residents. The Holy Spirit moved in my heart, and I found myself crying out for this church and for this place to see an outpouring of the Spirit. I thought about The Jesus Revolution movie and what the Lord did in the hippie generation in the ‘70s, and I prayed “Jesus, do it again, do it here!” There are plenty of similarities- people who are already counter-cultural but are seeking a worldly utopia by their own power, disillusioned by the empty promises of consumerist society and seeking a “spiritual” experience. Join me in praying that Jesus would make himself known on Salt Spring Island, and that he would bless Community Gospel Chapel. One of the most encouraging things that happened was that we met my sister’s best friend and her family at the church. My sister’s friend became a Christian recently after watching The Chosen, and her husband and kids have now become very involved with the church community there. I’m praying they would be like the first fruits of a greater harvest!

After Salt Spring, we were home for a few days before heading to Mexico with Carolyn’s whole family. We do numerous vacations with the family, but going international was a first. On the plane trip down to Puerto Vallarta, the man next to me started a conversation early in the flight. The conversation didn’t stop until we were disembarking the plane- 5 straight hours! He was a guy my age, loves sports, has a young family and lives in Greater Vancouver. I heard some of his story and inevitably we talked about Christian faith- inevitable partly because as soon asks me what I do for work, the topic of Jesus is somewhat unavoidable. He grew up with some exposure to church, but it wasn’t a positive experience. He saw firsthand the hypocrisy of people who called themselves Christians but lived like anything but. Now, he’s not against Christian faith or church and believes in some kind of benevolent higher power. However, like a lot of Vancouverites, his mindset is “why become a Christian? What would that do for me?” He’s got money, a great family, a rewarding job, a nice home in a world class city. He’s not currently experiencing a “God-sized hole” in his life. I’ve heard someone else say about Vancouver that it’s hard to convince someone they need heaven when they think they’re already there. What do you say to someone like that? How do you invite someone to trust in Christ when there’s no big earthquake shaking the foundations of their life? I’m so grateful for conversations like this, along with some of the ones I had on Salt Spring, because they make me depend on God. They force me to come to terms with my own evangelistic weaknesses and even in the course of conversation to be begging God for wisdom and direction. In this case, I believe the Holy Spirit led me to encourage my new friend to seek out the identity of this benevolent higher power. He believes this “being” or “force” has provided for him and opened doors for him. I said, if that’s true, wouldn’t you want to know who He is? If someone was giving you gifts, wouldn’t you want to know the identity of the giver so that you could thank Him? I don’t know if I made much headway, but have been praying for him ever since.

Back to Mexico- a year ago our own family did a trip to a resort there and I shared about how underwhelming it was. There’s a reason it was an incredibly cheap deal! Our week this year was very different, mostly because we weren’t the ones paying! It was very relaxing and a ton of fun for our kids. For the Sunday that we were there, we found an English-speaking church within walking distance from the resort. This church only has services from October to April, though they have a year-round Spanish service and outreach in a poorer community outside Puerto Vallarta. I can’t imagine how challenging it would be to lead a church as transient as one like this, made up mostly of snowbirds and short-term tourists. I’m grateful to God that He raises up leaders in all kinds of places. I read in a book recently about how completely unprecedented the Christian mission was in the first century. The pagan world had no real comparison to the kind of passionate drive of Christ-followers to make Him known throughout the Roman Empire. That Holy Spirit-inspired drive is why you’ll even find people who have a vision to start churches like the one we attended in Mexico!

We’ve now been back in Vancouver for a few days and are preparing for the next adventure, the really big one. On Monday we fly to Europe for three months, beginning with Spain. This week has been all about home-schooling with the kids (trying to get as much done now so we can pack lighter next week), working through an extensive to-do list in preparation for the trip, and in my case, getting as much reading done as possible (similar to the kids, this is because we’re packing light and I’m not bringing any physical books with me). The hope is that once we’re in Spain, I’ll have done most of the research needed for my writing projects so that I can start in on the actual writing.

Let’s end it there. This is already about 75% longer than any of you were expecting or wanting. If you’ve made it this far, two huge thumbs up. I want you to know that we pray for our church every day, asking that the Lord would pour out His Spirit on all of you, that He would draw many people to Himself through you, that He would strengthen and heal you and your relationships, that you would be encountering Him and growing in the grace of Christ Jesus. We love you deeply and are so thankful for The Bridge Church. We ask you to pray that the Lord would continue to refresh us so that we are able to return full of joy and energy for what lies ahead for us and our church.

How’s that for a creative article title? It doesn’t get more straightforward than that! Last Sunday after the 11am service, we had a congregational meeting and gave those who attended some updates on life at The Bridge Church. We had a financial update, welcomed some new members, and talked about my upcoming sabbatical. The short story on that last piece is that from January to April, I will be working on my Doctorate of Ministry dissertation and our family will be spending the bulk of that time in Europe. I’m writing about what a church like The Bride can learn from how the early church engaged with its culture despite having little power or influence. I’m excited to visit some of the places the early church took root! In the meantime, The Bridge will have a few great guest preachers who will take turns doing short sermon series while other gaps are filled internally by staff and leaders. I know the Lord will continue to work in powerful ways and I’m looking forward to hear what He does while I’m away!

However, that’s not what I want to write about. I want to fill you in on something I shared regarding our longer term vision and direction as a church. You know that we have seen continual growth over these last 4 years or so. Two years ago, we had one Sunday morning service and it was becoming quite full. At the November congregational meeting that year, we shared a vision for moving to two services. The tagline I used (given to me from a pastor friend) was “it takes two to reach the one”- two services to be able to reach that person who is open to the Gospel. I shared Scriptures like Isaiah 49:19-21 and Luke 5:1-7 to make the case that we were needing to create more space for the people the Lord was bringing to us (and bringing to Himself through us). Now, a couple of years later, we’ve once again been feeling a bit of a squeeze (more so at the 11am service than the 9am). If the Lord continues to bring about this growth of numbers of people, how do we make more space to accommodate that growth?

What I presented on Sunday was what our leadership team has sensed the Holy Spirit may be leading us to. Essentially, we could take that tagline from two years ago and repeat it: it takes two to reach the one. However, the “two” in this case is not another service, but another site. I’ll try to explain. We recognize that we have people coming from a wide geographical range to Deep Cove on Sundays, especially from other areas of the north shore. We also recognize that some of those areas have minimal church presence. Instead of simply adding more services here in Deep Cove, could we plant an extension of The Bridge in some of those neighbourhoods and embody the Gospel for people right in their community? 

The particular approach we feel drawn to is neither an independent church plant nor a “satellite campus”. A church plant has to develop all its own structures and resources, a challenge that leads a significant number of church plant attempts to fold. A satellite campus will often show the video of the sermon preached from the “home base”, possibly making it feel more like a glorified overflow space. However, a multi-site model like the one we’re looking at tries to combine the incarnational strengths of a church plant and the advantages of sharing resources and leadership that characterize satellite campuses. The vision is that we would empower a site pastor who would especially shepherd the people who are part of that new site. However, preaching would be on a rotational basis among the sites- for example, I might preach two or three times a month in Deep Cove and once or twice at the other site, but all preachers at all sites would be preaching the same texts with more or less the same basic idea. All sites would be under the overall umbrella of The Bridge, sharing resources with the whole church. We’d have one board and one staff team. Some ministries would be together as one (eg. Youth ministry) but there might be some that a site would undertake in its own local context (eg. Alpha). A lot of the practicalities will need to be worked out, but the good news is that this isn’t some untested idea we’ve come up with on our own. Tenth Church in Vancouver has been using this model for close to 20 years. The pastor who oversees the site pastor team at Tenth Church is someone I’ve known for years. He visited our leadership retreat in September and walked our board and staff through the vision and logistics of becoming a multi-site church. The result was that our leadership were excited and united about moving in this direction!

What does that mean for now? Becoming a multi-site church won’t happen overnight. It may be one or two years before we’re ready to launch, assuming God continues leading us towards that vision. In the meantime, join us in praying for the process and for discernment. Also, consider how you can be used in multiplication. I shared on Sunday that even something as simple as paying attention to who you haven’t seen at a worship service for a few weeks and checking in with that person is huge. Greeting people you don’t recognize or who are standing by themselves in the atrium is another big one. Deciding to serve in a ministry like kid’s ministry or the hospitality team or the worship team would be a gift. To plant an extension of our church in a new community will require more people than ever being mobilized for God’s Kingdom mission.

Regardless of how it all plays out, I’m excited about what lies ahead for The Bridge! Jesus is our captain, so let’s follow him wherever he takes us!

At our Monday noon prayer meeting this week, I was rebuked for my statement on Sunday morning that only 5-10 people read my newsletter articles. In fact, one of our leaders, Dan, whipped out a quote from a newsletter article from one year ago proving that he reads them. He proceeded to request that I repost that same article this year. The Bible says to submit to our authorities, so here you go. We’re now at the stage where I’m reproducing stuff I’ve already said, trusting that unlike Dan, you won’t remember it.

The article in question had to do with what October 31st represents for churches historically (versus the celebration of darkness that night has become in our culture). Here it is with some slight revisions:

This Friday is October 31, and we all know what day October 31 is, don’t we? Reformation Day! Everyone knows that on this day, little children dress up like their favourite Protestant Reformation character (the classic is Martin Luther, but it’s way more fun to dress up as King Henry VIII or Queen Elizabeth I). They then go door to door, nailing hand-written lists of suggestions for the reformation of the church so all their neighbours can share in the joy. Later in the evening, children and adults traditionally hold pretend church councils where the adults interrogate children about the orthodoxy of their beliefs. It is truly a night to remember.

Can you imagine if that was the case, if that’s what actually happened in neighbourhoods on this day? Seems like a fun idea, though probably traumatic, especially the church council part. However, October 31 really is “Reformation Day”. It is the day in 1517 (507 years ago today) that a German Roman Catholic monk named Martin Luther set in motion an event with enormous consequences for the world. At the time, the Roman Catholic Church had been plagued with corruption and theological decay. Pope Leo X (who coincidentally had a pet elephant, which is not totally relevant, just interesting) wanted to engage in some significant building projects. To get the money, he promoted the sale of “indulgences”. That meant that people could donate money to the church and in return have some of the penalty for their sins reduced. The more you give, the less time in purgatory you spend. For a little while already leading up to this, Martin Luther had a very different idea of forgiveness. He had experienced a breakthrough when studying Romans 1:17, which talks about the righteousness of God being revealed by faith. He had understood then that salvation from God was not something you could work towards (and certainly not pay for financially) but a free gift through Christ. When he heard about this new campaign of indulgences coming down from the Pope, Luther knew he had to respond. 

He wrote up 95 theses against this practice of indulgences, a list he called the “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences”. He wrote it in Latin and posted it on the door of the castle church of his home town of Wittenberg, Germany. He wrote it in Latin because he thought it would only be of interest to academics and priests. He didn’t think it would cause a big stir. But somebody translated it into German, others began running it through printing presses (a relatively recent phenomenon), and it began to spread throughout the land. Partly because of the intense opposition he encountered (including a number of adversarial church councils), Luther continued to write and develop a theology that was rooted in the Scriptures rather than in accumulated centuries of Catholic tradition. The movement spread and branched out in all kinds of directions, ultimately resulting in the Protestantism we see today. The Bridge Church is part of that legacy, and it all started with a priest nailing a bunch of ideas to a church door on October 31.

We have now been in Romans for over a year. When I first wrote this article, we were in chapter 2. This coming Sunday we’ll be in chapter 15. Progress! One of the major themes in Romans is that we often think we are saved because we’re moral and try to do the right thing. That may have been in the background of some of the disputable matters we’ve been looking at the last couple of weeks. Some of the Roman Christians may have believed they were more righteous than others based on their eating habits. When we think in similar ways, we fall into the “older brother” mentality in Jesus’ parable in Luke 15, looking down on those who don’t seem to have it all together like we do. This is one of the things that can happen with religious people. It would seem that Martin Luther was aware of that in himself, and he saw it in abundance in the Catholic Church of his time. The insight that changed everything for Luther was, again, to understand that his right-standing with God could not be based on religion, or on adherence to tradition, or on the word of the Pope. It was by faith through and through, and this was the best news possible.

We may live more than 500 years after the fact, but reformation was not a one time historical thing. We all need continual re-formation in the gospel. For many people, our natural tendency seems to be slip back into moralistic religion and to find some way of justifying ourselves before God and others. Grace, as beautiful as it is, grates against our bent towards self-sufficiency. So, this week, whether you nail any documents to any doors in your community or not, nail the gospel to your heart. Remind yourself that you are a sinner saved purely by the grace of our good God.

The title of this post is a question a lot of people ask. Some are pretty clear what their gifts are and they’re serving in line with them. Some are pretty clear on their gifts and aren’t serving because the doors haven’t opened for them yet, for whatever reason. Others know their gifts and aren’t using them to bless others simply because they just don’t want to (read Matthew 25:24-30 for a stark reminder of what God thinks of that general mindset). But some don’t know. They’re uncertain about what they’ve been put here to do and about what they can contribute to the body of Christ. This post is an attempt to help with that.

Now, just knowing your gifts doesn’t ensure you’re going to be right where God wants you to be. It’s an important aspect, but when discerning God’s call on your life, it’s only one element. There are a few leadership groups in our church that are going through a book called “Leadership Essentials” right now. In one chapter, the authors (Greg Ogden and Daniel Meyer) outline an acronym for discerning God’s call on your life: “G-I-F-T”. Here it is:

G: Grace gifts. This is what I’ve talked about above. Need I say more? Probably, but I won’t. Moving on.

I: Insights and inspirations. This is about your passions. This maybe gets at some of the questions Keller encourages us to ask. What are the issues you notice and especially concern you? Do you find yourself asking, “why doesn’t anybody do something about that problem? It seems so obvious what needs to happen!” If you’re asking that, you might be that person! Ogden and Meyer write “there is some need or opportunity in your church, your community, your circle of influence or even in the world beyond about which you will have a burning insight and are inspired to act, a sense of passion that ‘for this I was made.”

F: Form. This is about your personality, temperament, and strengths. You are a unique individual, wired in a particular way. Understanding what makes you tick will help you see what kinds of ministries fit that wiring best.

T: Treasure. Ogden and Meyer again: “the way we amass and invest our money and possessions can suggest something about where our passion and gifting lies. These things tell us what we truly care about and what we’re good at.”


There’s a lot there to think about and reflect on and there’s much more that could be said. Hopefully this can provide some first steps if you’re unsure of your gifting and calling. May you prayerfully, with “sober judgment”, discern how God has gifted you and called you to make Him known in this world!

“The Charlie Kirk effect”. I’ve begun to see this term thrown around in the last week after Charlie Kirk, a very outspoken Christian and a young conservative leader in the US, was assassinated during an event in Utah last Wednesday. Already over the last few years, there has been a significant movement, especially among young men, towards conservatism. Along with that has come a greater openness among some to Christian faith. Charlie Kirk (along with others) was instrumental in that movement. However, it seems that his killing might be accelerating the shift. Apparently, the organization that Kirk founded, Turning Point USA, has had close to 40,000 requests for new chapters on high school and college campuses in the past week. Previous to Kirk’s death, they had a presence on about 3,500 campuses. There were also numerous stories from this past weekend about churches that were packed to the brim and anecdotal evidence of people announcing that because of last week’s tragedy, they were going to church for the first time in their life. Personally, I had numerous conversations on Sunday with people who had decided to make significant steps towards Christian faith since the news.

What’s going on here? What is it about Charlie Kirk’s assassination that would drive some people to church? What is it about our cultural moment that is turning some young people towards Christian faith? There will be entire books written about these questions, but here’s one very short, simple answer: it is as the darkness grows darker that the source of light becomes clearer. Over the last number of years, as our culture has increasingly divorced itself from any transcendent foundations, its emptiness and hypocrisy has become more and more evident. The lies and deception have been exposed. I know that in our church that there are new Christians who considered Christian faith for the first time because they became aware of the darkness around them. Following that, they came to see that there was light in the world, and that it was coming from Christ. The distinction between darkness and light has become more significant in our day, resulting in some people tiring of the darkness and coming to Jesus. The assassination of Charlie Kirk and the celebratory reaction in some corners of culture is just one more example of that darkness that is driving some to the light. You don’t have to agree with all of Charlie Kirk’s policy positions to see that.

How do we respond to this, as the church? We’ve got to shine the light! As we said on Sunday, let’s ensure that we’re not conforming to the patterns of the world, but that we’re being transformed by the renewing of our minds. Let us respond to events like this not by growing angry and militant, nor by shrinking back out of fear. Let us resolve to continue sharing the Gospel and confidently pointing people to the life that comes through Jesus. In situations like this, I’m always reminded of the Jerusalem church’s response to persecution in Acts 4. They gather for prayer and ask that the Lord would give them boldness to speak His word, and that He would stretch out His hand to do signs and wonders through the name of Jesus. They’re not asking for God to strike their opponents down, and they’re not asking for the opposition to stop. They’re asking for boldness and for the power of the Spirit to continue making Jesus known through the church. That’s my prayer now too.

The Lord’s doing something right now. I feel that. I hear it in people’s stories. Even though the darkness is increasingly dark, the light of the world is shining as brightly as ever. It’s exciting to be a part of this. Let’s be praying that we really would be living sacrifices and that the Gospel would be made known through our counter-cultural, transformed life together.

As you (hopefully) know, this week is a week of 24/7 prayer for us at The Bridge. That means that we have people praying for our church at every minute of every day throughout the week, and that we have set aside a whole bunch of times to worship and pray together. On Monday night, we had the first of three worship and prayer nights (the others being Wednesday and Friday).

As I drove to the church building that night, I thought about how to open up the evening. My mind kept turning to Exodus 33. The Israelites, having been recently set free from slavery in Egypt, have just participated in the “Golden Calf” incident, where they set up an idol and worshiped it as if it was a god. God is not happy about this. In fact, at one point it looks as if God is going to send Moses and the Israelites on ahead without Him. This prompts Moses to plead: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (33:15-16) To Moses’ great relief, the Lord’s reply is: “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” (33:17) The Lord even shows Moses His glory, though Moses can only handle a small sampling of it.

I resonate deeply with Moses’ plea. Lord, if you don’t go with us, we’ve got nothing. We can’t go out there and do anything without you. What sets us apart unless we have your presence? See, this is what sets us apart: the presence of God. What sets us apart is not our coffee, it’s not our songs, it’s not our marketing strategies, it’s not our building. What sets us apart is not even doing things like a 24/7 prayer week. If we are doing this just because it’s what we always do in September or so that we can check some things off our spiritual to-do list, it will accomplish nothing but a slightly inflated ego. We deeply, desperately need the presence of God. That’s what makes us different. It is when people experience the Lord’s presence that lives are changed. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul is talking about the spiritual gift of prophecy. He paints a picture of Christians meeting together and receiving words from the Holy Spirit that they would have no way of knowing on their own. The result, Paul says, is that unbelievers “will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”” (14:25) What causes repentance and conversion? The presence of God among His people.

I resonate deeply with Moses’ plea, and I’m deeply encouraged by the Lord’s response too. “I know you by name”- and “I will do the very thing you have asked.” God wants to go with us. He knows us thoroughly and thoroughly wants to be with us. The very end of the Bible tells us that His presence will be the defining characteristic of eternity: “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21:3) God wants to be present with us and is eager to honour requests like Moses’.

So here’s what it comes down to: do we want the Presence? He wants to be with us, but He wants us to want that! Do we hunger and thirst for His presence among us? Do we see that without His presence, nothing will truly set us apart in the world? Do we see that apart from His presence, there will be no power of transformation in us or through us? If you don’t have that desire, then ask for it. Cry out to the Lord for it! Don’t give up until He gives you a burning desire for His presence.

Let this hunger be the basis for our prayer and our worship this week at The Bridge. Don’t pray because you feel guilty if you don’t. Don’t come to worship nights because you feel obligated. Pray and worship this week because, like Moses, you don’t want to do anything without Him. Let us be a church that is desperate for Jesus to make Himself known to us and through us. As the Bible says in another context, “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:24)

Last week, a group of approximately 60 people from The Bridge travelled to the Okanagan Gleaners in Oliver, BC. It is not officially a “family” trip- anyone is welcome to come. However, over the last four years, the way it has worked out is that it’s been families with school-aged children that have joined us. Shortly before this year’s trip, I had bought and read a very recently published book called “The Tech Exit: a practical guide to freeing kids and teens from smartphones”. Let me tell you about the book and then I’ll tell you about what it had to do with the Gleaners. Hopefully, by the end of this article, some of you will be convinced you need to read this book as well.

The Tech Exit is written by Clare Morell, a “fellow” at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is a Washington think tank significantly shaped by Christian faith. Morell herself is married to a pastor, and while Christian faith clearly influences her writing, this isn’t a “Christian book”. It’s written for anyone who is concerned by how screens seem to have taken over an entire generation and are wondering what can be done. The book especially addresses families, though schools and governments also have a role to play in undoing some of the damage done by screens.

There were a bunch of things I loved about this book. The biggest one is that Morell pulls no punches. A lot of books about usage of technology, especially in childhood and adolescence, boil down to “harm reduction”. They’ll tell you that it’s unavoidable for kids’ lives to be thoroughly intertwined with social media or video games or whatever else, and that the best you can do is set screen time limits and enact parental controls. The Tech Exit says that those strategies fall well short and that something much more drastic is necessary: a full-out avoidance of smartphones for kids and teens. This is an uncompromising, no-holds-barred book. Just to show you how bold this book is, Morell quotes a former Member of Parliament named Miriam Cates in a speech to British Parliament that (advance warning) will feel very uncomfortable to read: “Imagine if, on their daily walk to school, our children had to witness the beheading of strangers or the violent rape of women and girls. Imagine if, when hanging out in the local park, it was normal for hundreds of people to accost our child and encourage them to take their own life. Imagine if it was a daily occurrence for our children to be propositioned for sex or blackmailed into stripping for strangers. Imagine if every mistake that our child made was advertised on public billboards, so that everyone could laugh and mock until the shame made life not worth living. This is not a horror movie or some imaginary Wild West; this is the digital world that our children occupy, often for hours a day.” Morell follows that with her own application: “we don’t take our children to bars and strip clubs and blindfold them or have them wear earplugs. That would be absurd. We just don’t let them go to those places. It should be the same for the virtual world.”

The other thing I loved about this book was its very practical orientation. It’s not just a book about the theoretical dangers of the digital world, it presents deeply pragmatic solutions to this problem. I used to think that if you had already opened the door to some of this as a family, there was no going back. However, Morell provides a strategy for families to undo a screen-saturated life. A significant aspect of that is to find other families that are on the same page. Doing the Tech Exit by yourself is going to be really, really hard. But if there’s a community around you that is committed to doing it together, your kids are much more likely to buy in. Morell again: “The only successful approach to pushing screens out of childhood is to stand with others and build counter pressures through communities.”

And that leads me to what happened at the Gleaners last week. I began the week by telling everyone about the Tech Exit book. I talked about how during this week at the Gleaners, drawing on Paul’s language in Ephesians 4:22-24, we wanted to take certain things off and put certain things on. We wanted to take off our usage of screens and put on service and relationships. The parents had already been warned in advance that we’d be asking for kids not to have their devices, so I don’t think it was a shock.

I was so, so grateful for what I heard on Friday, our final day there. Every year, we end the week by going around and having everyone share how the Lord worked in their life that week, or what stood out the most. There were a few kids who said that God had showed them the goodness of a screen-free life (or something along those lines). Parents, too, commented on how great it was to see kids interacting with each other without devices. A few of the kids mentioned how they had discovered a love for fishing this past week (of all things!) and the value of doing things with others in God’s creation. We’ll see if those insights get carried out into life outside of the Gleaners!

Here’s my big point, though: we all want to see kids and teens flourishing in the Lord. I think we all know, on some level or another, that smartphones, social media, video games, and so on are not helping that vision. I would want everyone to read The Tech Exit, but especially parents. If you are a parent or a grandparent, I strongly, strongly recommend reading this book. It will be a gift to you and to the kids in your lives.

Once in a while, somebody asks a question or suggests a topic for my newsletter post and I take them up on it. That’s what happened this week. Most of us have read about the flash floods in Texas last week and the devastation that occurred: a flood that to this point has claimed over 100 lives. What has especially stood out for many is “Camp Mystic”, a Christian summer camp where at least 27 girls are among the victims of the flood. When disasters like this take place, there are almost always some questions about God’s existence and compassion. If there really is a God, and if that God really is good and great, how could that God allow suffering like this to happen? It’s probably at the top of the list of issues people have with the idea of God. I wonder if the specifically Christian nature of Camp Mystic adds fuel to the fire. If these girls and their parents have faith, why would God allow this to happen specifically to them? Shouldn’t He be protecting those who trust in Him the most? The person asking if I could do a write-up about the floods attached a social media post from someone stating, “I can’t even imagine how parents could have faith after these disastrous floods!”

Obviously, the persistent presence of questions like this means that there is no single, universally satisfactory answer available to us. However, the persistent presence of faith in the midst of tragedies like these floods indicates that people have found ways to endure despite the questions. That’s how it is so often when we do “apologetics”- a word that doesn’t mean we’re apologizing for faith, but that we are offering a defence or explanation for faith. With apologetics, it’s not that we are arguing someone into the Kingdom, but that we are removing barriers to show people that it’s possible and even rational to believe. That’s what I’ll briefly try to do in this post. I want to suggest four points to consider.

First, let’s respond to the questions about why God would allow this to happen to children at a Christian camp, who are supposedly His people. The Bible gives us no illusions that if we trust in God, we will be prevented from experiencing suffering. Jesus says in Matthew 5:45 that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteousness.” In Luke 13:1-5, Jesus refers to two recent deadly events of his time. He asks if those who were killed were more guilty than those who were spared? And he responds with an emphatic no. We could say that the righteous are not set apart because they are immune to the evil in the world. They are set apart by their response to suffering: it causes them to turn to the Lord and seek Him, rather than running away. I saw one video of some of the girls from Camp Mystic leaving the camp on a bus after these deadly floods. In the video, they were singing a worship song. Similarly, in an article a couple of months ago, I mentioned hearing worship music in a Filipino store on Fraser Street in Vancouver after the Lapu-Lapu Day massacre. The righteous are not set apart because they avoid suffering, but by how they respond to it.

Second, as much as the question of suffering is an issue for believers, it’s been pointed out that it might be an even bigger issue for non-believers. This is apparently what C.S. Lewis came to understand. He had once rejected the idea of God because of the kinds of tragedies I’ve written about here. This is what he wrote in Mere Christianity: “my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’?…What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?” In other words, if there’s no God, there’s no basis for complaining about suffering or thinking there’s anything wrong with mass casualty events. After all, in this view, the universe is blind and purposeless, just a random sequence of events. Apart from a belief in God, our intuition that something about this world is not right or should be otherwise doesn’t seem to be built on a very solid foundation. The issue of suffering in the world is an issue for everyone, but perhaps even more so for those who reject God’s existence.

Third, Christianity in particular says that while we may not understand exactly why God allows certain things in His creation to happen, we know that God is not distant from it. (By the way, as a side note, my thinking in this post has been extensively shaped by Tim Keller’s The Reason for God and in particular his chapter on why God allows suffering.) Christianity alone says that the Son of God became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and that He suffered unimaginable pain leading up to the cross. I’m a bit undecided about the extravagant amounts of money paid for Christian ads at the Super Bowl the last couple of years, but I agree in principle with the message: “He gets us”. Our God understands what it means to be human, to lose a loved one (John 11:33-37), and to experience a brutal, excruciating death Himself. As Psalm 23 says, he truly is our good shepherd who is with us even in the valley of the shadow of death.

And fourth, Christian faith is based on the hope of the resurrection. We believe that a day is coming when God will make all things new and will wipe every tear from our eyes (Revelation 21:4-5), and this is not simply wishful thinking. It is based on the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus, and the biblical teaching that those who trust in Jesus will be raised like he was to dwell forever in a renewed creation with him (Philippians 3:20-21, Revelation 21:7). Apart from God, what hope can someone have for another world where tragedies like these floods won’t happen? On what basis can someone, apart from Christ, trust in a renewed creation? Here’s what Keller writes: “Even religions that believe in a heavenly paradise consider it a consolation for the losses and pain of this life and all the joys that might have been. The Biblical view of things is resurrection- not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted. This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater.” The hope of the Christian, based on the resurrection of Jesus, means we can see beyond these events to a day of restoration.

Again, what I’ve written here won’t answer all the questions. We continue to mourn with those who mourn and lament the pain and tragedy that can characterize life in this world. But for Christians, even for those who are experiencing the crushing devastation of these floods in Texas, “we do not mourn as those who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

Recently, I’ve had a number of conversations with people asking me about my thoughts about Artificial Intelligence. People seem surprised when I tell them I’ve tried my best to avoid using AI at all. I’ve never used ChatGPT, I avoid any AI feature on my phone like the plague, I quickly skip past the AI overview on any Google search and look for the “real stuff”. If I do use the AI overview, I make sure I click the actual links to see if the information is actually true. Some of that is because I simply don’t trust AI. I’ve heard too many stories about AI “hallucinating”. One pretty funny one recently was an AI-compiled “summer reading list” that a couple of major American publications put out last month. However, apparently nobody checked the list before hitting “publish”, because while all the authors were real people, the books they had supposedly written were completely fabricated by AI- they weren’t real books! (https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/chicago-sun-times-ai-book-list-1.7539016) Some of my hesitancy is because I see lots of potential for idolatry in AI- whether that’s the foundation of new religions with AI as the deity to be worshiped (https://news.umanitoba.ca/gods-in-the-machine-the-rise-of-artificial-intelligence-may-result-in-new-religions/) or some AI models apparently believing themselves to be worthy of worship (https://futurism.com/microsoft-copilot-alter-egos). Some of it is because I believe there will be all kinds of unintended consequences to the AI revolution- one of them possibly being widespread unemployment and increased reliance on government handouts (https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/14/money-for-nothing-is-universal-basic-income-about-to-transform-society). And some of it, as I jokingly say, is because when the robots do take over, I don’t want them to have anything on me.

If you’re wanting to read more about why it might be a good idea to think carefully about Artificial Intelligence, I have two books to recommend for you. This is my recommended summer reading list for those wanting to think through AI usage, and I promise you they are real books by real authors. I read them (or a version of them) as part of my studies, and they were eye-opening.

Here’s the first: “The Coming Wave” by Mustafa Suleyman. Suleyman isn’t a Christian, so this is not written from any kind of theological perspective (which also means you could get it at the library). But it is written by someone who knows AI well- in fact, he was the founder of two AI companies and is now the CEO of Microsoft AI. He is also very pessimistic/realistic (?) about the negative impacts the AI revolution might have. Actually, that’s understating it. This was one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. If you want to get a sense of how things could go off the rails with AI, read this book. The biggest takeaway: there is a desperate need for AI advancement to be “contained”, and yet that will almost assuredly not happen because of various human (and while he doesn’t use this term, I will: sin-drenched) factors.

When I read “The Coming Wave”, I felt fear for the future of our society. It was a wake-up call in that way. And then I read this second book: “2084: Artificial Intelligence and the future of humanity” by John Lennox. Lennox is a Christian and very much writes with that perspective in mind (which means you will probably not get it at the library). Lennox is a brilliant Oxford scientist and philosopher. I read the original version that was written in 2020 (in other words, ancient history when it comes to this topic), but I see on Amazon that the book has been updated and expanded and republished within the last year. Reading Lennox after Suleyman didn’t really lessen my hesitancy about AI. In fact, it gave me some biblical and theological language for that hesitancy. In the 2020 version, Lennox even suggests that Artificial General Intelligence could be an instance of God actually allowing us to create a god of our own making and give life to it before Christ returns. But the book also gave me hope. It reminded me of God’s sovereignty in the midst of the radical changes that might be coming.

Look, I know I’m on the more extreme end of this. Personally, the Amish aren’t looking too bad these days. On the other hand, I have no doubt there are good and helpful uses for AI. But I do think that we as Christians need to think carefully about this and be discerning about what kinds of new technology we embrace and what the fruit of those might be. Use it or don’t, just don’t assume that because we can do something, we should do it. As Paul says to the Corinthians, “'I have the right to do anything,’ you say- but not everything is beneficial.” (1 Cor. 6:12)

I’ve been reminded again that the book of Genesis is a literary masterpiece, with all its patterns, connections, and narrative devices. As we’ve gone through this short sermon series on the life of Jacob, I really believe his life could easily be made into a TV series in the same way that David’s life has been on House of David. One of the ways we see this genius storytelling at work is the way that what Jacob had done to others is now turned back on him. (By the way, when I say “storytelling”, I don’t mean that these events didn’t actually take place. They did. By “storytelling”, I mean the way these events are narrated in the Bible.)

I alluded to this a bit on Sunday, but in Genesis 29 we see how Laban takes advantage of Jacob’s desperation to cut a deal that’s very beneficial to Laban. Just like Jacob was able to trade a bowl of soup for Esau’s birthright because of Esau’s desperation, Laban is able to effectively trade two daughters in marriage for 14 years of free labor from Jacob because of Jacob’s desperation for Rachel. Here’s another one: just like Jacob and his brother were subjected to favouritism from their parents, Jacob now subjects his two wives (who are sisters) to favouritism. Here’s one more: in Genesis 27, Jacob pretends that he is Esau so that Isaac will give him the blessing that he meant to give to Esau. Now in Genesis 29, Leah essentially pretends she is Rachel so that Jacob will marry her when he meant to marry Rachel. The tables are turned on Jacob in regard to so many of the deceptive and twisted things that he was a participant in during his younger years.

There is a biblical concept at work here that has sometimes been called “the law of the harvest”. It finds expression in Galatians 6:7-9: “7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Jacob has been sowing deception for years, he now reaps the same from others. How he’s treated others, he’s now treated. We see that in all kinds of ways, don’t we? For example, if someone has lived generously, eager to give to others in need, people are generally eager to help them out in times of need too. If someone has been stingy all their life, the chances are people will not feel much compulsion to be generous toward them. What you reap, you sow. 

On one level, that sounds a lot like “karma”, doesn’t it? People will often talk about karma that way, as some kind of general principle that dictates the kinds of outcomes people will receive on the basis of how they’ve lived. Karma, however, is a Buddhist and Hindu concept that is tied to the idea of reincarnation. What you “reap” includes the fate that awaits you in your next life cycle. That, of course, bears no resemblance to what we find in the Bible, which says that we only have this life to live before we come into our eternal resurrection. Karma also lacks reference to any kind of personal God who is committed to justice, which is what we find in the Bible. And of course, things are never as simple as karma makes it out to be. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people. Jesus contested the simple correlation of “bad things happen to bad people” in passages like Luke 13:4, where he rebukes those who would blame the victims of a disaster. Jesus says in Matthew 5:45 that God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. The “law of the harvest” is more of a principle that holds true in general rather than some unbending rule.

But here’s the biggest difference between “karma” and what we find in the Bible, even regarding the law of the harvest: grace. Grace is when we receive what we do not deserve. Grace is a gift given because of God’s goodness, not because we’ve earned it. And we see grace in Jacob’s life too. God calls him and uses him not because Jacob is virtuous, but actually despite how unvirtuous he is. It is grace that ultimately changes things for this grasper and deceiver named Jacob, and it is grace that ultimately changes us sinners too. After all, this is the heart of the Gospel: we can live a life pleasing to God only because of the grace we’ve received through Christ. That’s what empowers us to please God. If all we had was karma, we’re doomed. But if we are able to receive what we don’t deserve- God’s forgiveness, His adoption of us, His gift of the Holy Spirit- then we can truly sow seeds that will bear good fruit.

The last words of Genesis 28:10-22 are Jacob’s pledge to God that “all of that you give me I will give you a tenth.” After I read it on Sunday morning, I announced, “all right, this morning all we’re going to talk about is tithing.” That comment generated a little bit of laughter (my wife would be quick to point out that it might have been pity laughter). The question is, why was it even maybe a little bit funny? Probably because tithing is clearly not the main point of the text, or even one of the 5 main points. Obviously that wasn’t going to be the sermon. But maybe there was some nervous laughter there too- “oh please no, please don’t talk about money, I invited my friend to church this week and this would be so embarrassing, I really hope that’s a joke!” Well, this is where the joke ends, because now I’m really going to talk/write about tithing. 

If you read it again, what Jacob says in Genesis 28:20-22 doesn’t sound like an admirable, strong statement of faith. Jacob’s still trying to control things, still trying to turn things to his own advantage. He says to God, if you watch over me, if you give me food to eat and clothes to wear, then you will be my God and all that you give me I’ll give you a tenth.” He’s giving God conditions! It doesn’t sound like a very mature trust, does it? And yet here we see how God is willing to work with where we’re at and move us to increasing maturity. He doesn’t wait until we’re all grown up before entering our lives or until we’ve figured everything out. That’s good news.

There is something important about what Jacob says at the end, though, regarding the tithe. This is the second time we’ve read something like a tithe in Genesis. In Genesis 14, in response to a military victory, Abraham (or “Grandpa Abe” as Jacob would have known him) had given a tenth of the spoils to Melchizedek, “a priest of God Most High”. That act was a recognition that the victory had come from the Lord. Jacob reflects the same understanding here. Everything that he has is given by the Lord: “all that you have given me”. It’s from Him. Nothing that we own truly comes about by our own power. In the end all of it is a gift from God. Jacob’s giving of a tenth is simply a recognition of that point. It’s an important reminder to himself of the source of what he’s been given and it’s an act of worship to the Giving God.

However, tithing can become twisted. We talked about that on Sunday regarding sacred spaces: a place we experience as a “gate of heaven” (28:17) becomes idolized when it becomes a way for us to control God and regulate our encounters with Him. Likewise, tithing is a good practice but if we’re not careful it becomes a way of limiting our generosity and regulating what He can expect of us. It almost seems like that’s how Jacob is treating it, as a way of getting God to do what Jacob wants Him to do. People might think that way today too: "God, if you’ll provide for me, then I promise I’ll give x amount to you." Another way people think about financial giving is that as long as you give Him a tenth, you can do whatever you want with the other 90%. Of course, a lot of people don’t give anywhere close to 10% in the first place! Regardless, I believe this is why the New Testament nowhere legislates a tithe. Instead, it urges radical generosity that is not constrained by a particular number or percentage or condition. That’s because while tithing points to an important principle, making a rule out of it can harden the heart and defeat the very principle it points to.

So here’s how I’ll put this all together. The New Testament does not order us to tithe, and I don’t believe we should use the promise of a tithe to get God to do something for us. However, God absolutely wants us to be generous, probably much more generous than we have been! Everything we have has been given to us by the Lord, and giving generously to work that glorifies Him reminds us of that and is an act of worship. So give joyfully and generously, thanking God for all that He has given you!

Sunday was a really heavy, emotional day for me, and at the top of the list of reasons was the tragedy in Vancouver on Saturday night. As I’d imagine was true for most of you, it hit really hard. It’s one thing to read about things happening on the other side of the world among people you have little connection with. But when something like that happens 20 minutes away, and you have family and friends who were there- the evil that exists in the world comes home in a different way. 

My wife grew up in that area and we were at her parents home for a family gathering on Sunday afternoon. Because of the heaviness I was feeling, I quietly left after dinner and went for a walk on my own. I found myself heading towards where the festival had taken place on Fraser Street, where a number of other people were gathered, leaving flowers and candles on the street corners. As I walked up Fraser, I passed a produce place with a huge Philippines flag hung on the storefront that had music playing on their speakers. The song that was playing as I passed was “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”. That hymn begins with these words:

“Great is Thy faithfulness,” O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

Doesn’t that seem like such a contradiction? Someone who plays that song after that kind of event might be called “tone deaf” by some in our culture. It’s different, of course, when the person playing that song is a member of the community that has just suffered so much. They know the pain of the world, but they also hold to the Lord’s faithfulness and compassion in the midst of it.

That’s what occurred to me on Sunday morning as we worshipped: worship is many things, but one of the aspects we might not give a lot of thought to is that it is an act of defiance. Worship is us looking at the world in all its twistedness and depravity and saying “YET…”. Yet God is good. Yet God is faithful. Yet God is compassionate. Yet God is working to accomplish His purposes. It is true that there is much darkness in the world. Yet it is also true that God IS, and that God is GOOD, and that the Lord is returning to wipe every tear from the eyes of His people.

Worship is an intentional act, whether you feel like it or not. It is a defiant decision to stand on the truth when all the world is shaking around you. May we be a people characterized by worship in every season and circumstance.

I was having lunch with a friend a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about his job. It’s one of those jobs where once you’re done for the day, you’re done. You’ll never need to think about that day’s work again, you just move on to the next one. I’ll be honest, there’s a part of me that’s envious of that. Having been a pastor in various capacities for 16 years or so now, that’s simply not the reality for me. When you’re working with people and seeking to raise disciples of Jesus, your work is never done. We are all “works in progress”, sometimes taking steps towards holiness, sometimes slipping away. Someone might be solid and growing one month and struggling the next. A church might seem to be thriving and on fire one moment and the next you’re convinced that it might be shutting down for good any day now. That means that it’s hard for me as a pastor to ever really celebrate anything, because there’s always a voice in my head saying, “but what happens tomorrow? What if this is just fleeting?” Someone recently helped me see how wrongheaded that is and how it sets me up for a lifetime of low-level, persistent pastoral anxiety. So I’ve decided to re-start a practice I once had but had let slip away for the last couple of years: a journal of how I'm seeing God work and where I've been encouraged. I want to regularly celebrate what God is doing now, even when I can’t know where someone’s story will ultimately lead. 

This is consistent with what we find in Romans 8, which we spent the last six weeks or so in as a church. Romans 8 is clear that the world is groaning, we are groaning, even the Holy Spirit is groaning in anticipation of God making all things new. However, in the midst of that, we have hope because of the glory that is coming when Christ returns. We also have hope because of the gifts we receive from the Lord in the midst of a broken world. There are all kinds of ways we experience His love even in the midst of trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger and the sword (Romans 8:35). Here are some of the ways I witnessed God’s love this past week, some of the reasons I can celebrate what He’s doing here:

-we baptized 7 people a week and a half ago, and I saw so much joy in those who were baptized. We showed Renata’s testimony on Sunday, and you can see at the end of the video, when she comes out of the water, how she has this huge smile on her face and is just shaking her head in joyful disbelief. It brought tears to my eyes.
-last night, we baptized two women in Kevin and Leanna’s pool. One of them, an elderly woman, is returning to China this month but has been at our church for the last year, without any comprehension of English. However, she was deeply moved by the passion and joy (there’s the word again) she experienced at The Bridge. She also had family members at The Bridge explaining what was going on. In the last few weeks, she announced that she wanted to be a Christian and be baptized. Thank you, Lord!
-at one of the worship and prayer nights last week, I got to pray with a few of our young adults and I got to hear their raw hunger for the Lord to move among us. I saw the Spirit touch their hearts as they worshipped. I was so moved to see people of this emerging generation growing in love for Jesus.
-at the Good Friday service, we had two crosses covered with paper cut-out hearts and a saying on them: “I laid my life down for you, _____, my friend”. The idea was for people to take a heart off the cross and write their name on the blank line as a way of reminding them what Jesus had done for them. It was so encouraging to see how many people eagerly participated, and then something happened that I didn’t expect: people began wearing the heart on their shirts and jackets. After the service, people were walking around treating these hearts like name tags, but with so much more meaning than a typical name tag. This is the identity of a Christian: a friend of Jesus, someone he laid his life down for.
-I was so encouraged to see how many people I didn’t know who came to the Easter Fair. It’s always impossible to count, but we know we had hundreds and hundreds of people in our building on Saturday, receiving an invitation to connect with us more. Kids did a scavenger hunt introducing them to what Jesus did for them on Easter. I love it when I see our church coming together for events like that, serving our community. Laura had 15 Bibles or so on the book give away table, and she said they were quickly scooped up by visitors. There is a hunger in our community that I believe has grown. 
-Easter Sunday- wow! That second service was so full there were people upstairs, on the sides of the auditorium, apparently even on the floor? Some of those people had come to the Easter Fair the previous day and came to a worship service on Sunday for the first time. Easter Sunday is always the best Sunday of the year, in my opinion, and this year was no different. There was so much joy, even in the midst of the “groaning” of this world, because Jesus is the risen king. 

What about you? What have you seen the Lord doing recently that you can celebrate?

You have probably experienced what it’s like to have a conversation with someone who seemed to have very little interest in a real conversation. Technically, both parties were talking, but for the other person this was mainly a platform for them to establish their superiority over you. We’ll call this The Performance Conversationalist. Believe it or not, this occasionally happens at gatherings of pastors. Once, I was at a conference, and the first question this older pastor asked was how big my church was. When I gave my answer, he was profoundly unimpressed and launched into…I can’t remember what exactly, but I think it was about the greatness of his church. I’ve had other conversations where someone asked me a question but didn’t seem to care about what I said in response, because the question was just an opening for them to provide their own answer (which was of course inevitably better than mine). 

At a less sinister level, we’ve probably all had conversations with someone that didn’t feel real because the other person was determined to keep it surface level. They couldn’t look you in the eye and tell you what was really going on and instead deflected everything. Many of use have probably been on both sides of that situation at some point or another. We’ll call this The Shallow Conversationalist.

As I preached through Romans 8:26-27 on Sunday, I said that prayer is a conversation- we talk to God, God speaks to us, God the Spirit speaks to God the Father. All those same pitfalls that can derail a genuine conversation apply to prayer as well. When Jesus speaks about the very different prayers of a Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14, the Pharisee is a lot like the Platform Conversationalist. Prayer is a way for him to display his superiority over others and to justify himself before God. On the other hand, when Jesus laments in Matthew 15:8 that “these people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me”, we see the Shallow Conversationalist. This is the kind of prayer that says the right things but wants to keep things from getting too real or honest, because their hearts aren’t actually open to the one they’re speaking to.

On the other hand, real conversation (and real prayer) involves honesty about what’s going on inside of you. It also involves a genuine openness to hearing from the other person and an interest in what they have to say. This is not a platform to prove yourself, and it is not a ritual to get through unscathed. Prayer is genuine conversation with God.

I hope that you’re joining us in prayer in some way this week. I hope you’ll come, or have come, to one of the worship and prayer nights we’re doing. I hope you’ve signed up for a slot on the 24/7 document, or that you’re joining with others for prayer. Like I said on Sunday, I believe that the health and effectiveness of our church really boils down to our prayer. As we prepare for our Easter services and events this weekend, we deeply want to see people hear the good news and believe and become part of Christ’s body. We know that the only way this will happen is if the Lord brings it about, and so we want to be devoted to prayer. However, we can pray badly, just like we can do conversation badly.  This isn’t about saying the wrong words or having enough “thees” and “thous”. The main thing in prayer is our heart, it’s the way we approach God. Let us come to him with open hearts, honest about our struggles and failings and doubts and frustrations. But let us also come to him wanting to hear from Him, wanting to be led by Him, wanting Him to have His will be done. 

Join us in genuine prayer this week- join us in genuine conversation with God. Through that, may we grow in relationship with Him and the degree to which His will is done in and through us.

On Sunday, as I was preaching Romans 8:18-25, I used a physical illustration- an object lesson of sorts. This required me to tap into my crafty side. “Side” makes it sound like there’s half of me that really enjoys doing crafts, but in reality this “side” is about 0.01% of me. Thankfully I have a daughter who makes up for that and she was all in on helping me with this part of my sermon preparation. After trying and failing to locate one of those apothecary-type of scales (if you don’t know what I mean, think about what “Lady Justice” is holding in her hand, or google “Lady Justice”), we decided to make one ourselves. If you were here on Sunday, you saw the very sophisticated result: a coat hanger with two buckets hanging off either side.

As I talked about the frustrations and groaning of this world, I dropped some marbles into one of the buckets, illustrating the “heaviness” that exists in this world. A number of news stories and personal conversations in the last couple of days have brought this home to me even deeper. Even in a society like ours that is comparatively healthy and functional, there is so much injustice. Guilty people go free or receive a slap on the wrist while others are punished and publicly shamed for comparatively much lesser deeds. There is so much brokenness in our culture. People who appear to have it all together in public are privately abusive or filled with rage. People who should be able to be trusted, like parents or pastors or teachers, take advantage of those in their care and exploit them for their own ends. It doesn’t take much exposure to this world to find yourself zealously praying some of the last words of the Bible: come, Lord Jesus!

On Sunday, though, I also talked about that glory that is to come through Christ. This is a glory that we already have the first taste of through the Holy Spirit and through the church (when the church is truly the church, when it has its eyes fixed on Jesus). However, a day is coming when Jesus will return, he will resurrect his people in bodies like his own resurrection body, and creation itself will be raised to new life in a new heavens and earth. In Romans 8:18, Paul says that he considers that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. To illustrate this, I took a large rock and placed it on top of the bucket opposite the marbles, entirely reversing the balance of my makeshift scales. Previously, I had put a few pieces of lego in that bucket to illustrate how ineffective and useless many of our attempts to deal with the heaviness of the world are. Maybe we turn to distractions like addictions, maybe we try to fix the brokenness of the world through protests or an obsession with safety- but apart from Christ, none of these attempts will alleviate the anxiety caused by the world’s heaviness.

So far, I’ve only said what I said on Sunday, so what makes this a “deleted scenes”? Here it is: I didn’t realize until later on Sunday the significance of choosing a rock to represent the coming glory. I just wanted something heavier than marbles. However, the Bible consistently compares God to a rock. Jacob calls God “the Rock of Israel” in Genesis 49:24. Deuteronomy 32:4 has Moses singing about how God “is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just.” Later on in that chapter, Moses says about other nations, “their rock is not like our Rock” (32:31). In Psalm 18:2, David proclaims that “the Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” In Matthew 7, Jesus compares the person who builds their life on his words with someone who builds their house on a rock instead of sand. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says that the rock that the Israelites received water from in the wilderness was in fact Christ. Peter encourages us to come to Jesus, “the living Stone” (1 Peter 2:4). That’s a “who’s who” of Bible names, all proclaiming the “Rock-ness” of God. He’s a steady foundation, He’s not shifting and changing, He’s dependable, He’s strong, and His glory outweighs all.

So the question I want to ask you today is this: given all the heaviness of the world, what will you put in the bucket of your life in order to deal with it all? Will you keep tossing in bits of legos? Lego can be fun, it can feel useful for some things, but it’s not going to do much to counteract the groaning of this world. Or will you turn to the Rock? Will you base your life on Christ, the faithful one, the dependable one, the Glorious one, the coming one? Make your choice: legos or the Rock?

As I write this today, it is St. Patrick’s Day, and I have completely failed. I don’t have even a bit of green on any of my clothing today. My car has some green growths on it, but that’s as close as I’m getting. I think some penance is required for this failure, and this is how I’ll do it: I’ll educate you a little bit about this Patrick guy. 

Some of you know the story. Patrick grew up around 400 AD in northwestern England. When he was 16 years old, he was kidnapped by a gang of Celtic pirates who then absconded with him back to Ireland and sold him into slavery there. During six years of enslavement, Patrick grew tremendously in his faith in Christ as well as in his understanding and even love of the Celts. After an apparently God-given dream, Patrick escaped slavery, returned to England, and was trained as a priest. Years later, Patrick received another dream, where his former captors asked for him to return and proclaim the Gospel (very similar to Paul’s dream in Acts 16:9). So Patrick returned to Ireland with a team of other Christian teachers, his time as a captive having taught him the language and culture shared by the few hundred thousand inhabitants of the island. Patrick and his team began planting Christian communities throughout Ireland, baptizing perhaps tens of thousands of new believers. There had been almost no Christian presence in Ireland before Patrick’s mission, but by the time he died around 460AD, about a quarter of Ireland’s 150 tribes had seen widespread acceptance of Christian faith. That number would continue to grow in the years after as others carried on Patrick’s work.

There’s a lot that we can take from that story, including yet another illustration of Romans 8:28 or Genesis 50:20: God’s propensity to take what was meant for evil and turn it for good. However, the piece I want to pick up on here is that God used Patrick in such a powerful way at least partly because Patrick was so incarnational. 

I read a book recently called “The Celtic Way of Evangelism” by George Hunter that recounts this history. A big question in the book is why this mission to the Celts was so successful, especially with so little exposure to the Gospel there beforehand. What set Patrick apart? Here’s what Hunter argues: “the fact that Patrick understood the people and their language, their issues, and their ways serves as the most strategically insight that was to drive the wider expansion of Celtic Christianity…when the people know that the Christians understand them, they infer that maybe Christianity’s High God understands them too.” God used Patrick as a bridge-builder. Patrick knew this culture, he loved the people, he understood how they thought, and he received a Spirit-driven desire to introduce them to Jesus. He did not plant Roman or British communities in Ireland- he planted Christian communities that adapted to their Irish context. 

In this, Patrick was just imitating his Lord and Savior. Romans 8:3 says that God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. This is a statement about what we call the incarnation, God becoming a human. It’s another way of saying what John says in the opening to his Gospel: the word (who was God) became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14). As I said on Sunday, “in the likeness of sinful flesh” means that Jesus authentically became human, even though he was not, in fact, sinful. Hebrews 4:15 says that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet he did not sin”. Jesus knows us. He understands us. And he loves us. That’s why he can be our saviour, it’s why he can be our advocate (1 John 2:1), it’s why he can be our interceder (Hebrews 7:25). He truly is our representative.

As for you, who has God given you a unique calling to serve and make Him known to? What would it look like for you to follow Jesus, and to follow in the footsteps of Jesus’ followers like Patrick, in “incarnational mission”?

Today (Wednesday), Chelsea will be setting up a table at CapU, handing out free coffee to students in cups that have a QR code that links to a page on our website. She wanted to have some sort of explanation of the Gospel on that page and asked for my help in putting something together. 

As I wrote out an attempt (which is below), I realized that this would actually be a good exercise for every follower of Jesus to do. If someone asked you to explain to them the Gospel message, or the message of the Bible, what would you say?

We’ve been spending a lot of time in Romans as a church. It seems to me that Paul had a variety of ways of answering that question. He had very “short-form” answers- one sentence versions like Romans 3:23-24 (“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”) He had more medium-form answers, like Romans 5:12-21 (the “Team Adam vs. Team Jesus” passage). And he had longer-form answers, which I think you could say the whole book of Romans is. Each form has its advantages and disadvantages. The longer your answer, the more comprehensive you can be, but you might lose your audience. The shorter the answer, the more memorable you can make it, but you end up missing all kinds of important pieces. 

So not only is it a good exercise to think through how you would answer that question, I think it’s also a good thing to do that on all three levels. If someone asked you about the Gospel, how would you answer in 10 seconds? In 5 minutes? In 20 minutes?

Here’s what I wrote out as a 5 minute, “medium-form” version.

Why are we here? What’s this life about?

Have you ever thought about that? It’s a huge question, isn’t it? I mean, it’s the question that determines everything else in life, and yet many people struggle to answer it.

The Bible tells us that God created the world and blessed it. It says He created humans “in His image”. That means that humans were made to be in relationship with God and to reflect His good and loving character towards others. We were made to be like mini kings and queens, taking care of God’s creation as His representatives.

However, a real relationship requires the possibility of rejection, doesn't it? Because God created us for relationship with Himself, He gave us a choice to live under His direction or to go our own way. From the early pages of the Bible onwards, humans have chosen to go their own way. We call this “sin”. Sin is not just the individual bad choices we make, it is also a disposition. It’s a whole way of life bent away from God and bent towards self as ultimate authority. While that might sound appealing at first, the consequences can be seen all around us: greed, violence, gossip, lust, hatred, and on and on. We’ve taken this good world and this good God-given purpose for our lives and made a bit of a mess of it (“a bit” might be an understatement).

Much of the Bible is the story of how God did not give up on His creation, including humanity, but how He has doggedly pursued reconciliation. Through the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (descendants known in the Bible as “Israel”), God made Himself known. He set them apart and gave them instructions on how to live so they could be a blessing to the world. However, it turned out that Israel needed saving as well. In the part of the Bible we call the Old Testament, the people of Israel ended up worshiping other gods, looking like all the nations around them. It turns out, sin is a human condition across the board. Again and again, humans have failed to uphold their end of the deal to be God’s image-bearers in the world. You and I have shared in this. All of us have.

And that’s where Jesus comes in. Jesus lived a life that did not succumb to the power of sin, but fully displays what it means to be in the image of God. He showed us what life was meant to look like. And that’s great, but it doesn’t really change our situation much, does it? That’s where the cross comes in. The Bible tells us that when Jesus was executed on a Roman cross, He did it as our representative. You see, from the very beginning, we found that the consequence for sin was death. After all, if sin is a rejection of God, and if God is the source of all life, then the outcome of cutting ourselves off from God is death, right? On our own, all of us would stand condemned before our Creator because we have failed to live as we were created to live. However, when Jesus (the representative human) died on the cross, He paid the price for our sin and removed the barrier that had existed between us and God. The Bible tells us that three days later, Jesus rose from the dead. Not only had He conquered sin, but He had conquered the consequence of sin, death itself.

This leaves us with a choice. We can choose to reject this news about Jesus and try to figure out life on our own. We can keep doing things our way. However, this also means that we will be wracking up a bigger and bigger “tab” with God that we’ll never be able to repay. OR we can receive this good news. We can put our trust in Jesus as our Savior and allow Him to be Lord of our life. Our sin is paid for and we are made right in our relationship with God once again.

If we make that second choice, Jesus gives us another gift: he gives us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s own presence, living within us, helping us bear God’s image more and more clearly. He gives us a new heart that is increasingly capable of mercy instead of vengeance, generosity instead of greed, love instead of hatred, and so on. The Holy Spirit helps us experience God’s presence in our lives and to know that through Jesus, we are now God's beloved children. The Holy Spirit gives us gifts so that we can serve others and make this good news known to them.

Finally, the Bible tells us that the time is coming when Jesus will return and make all things new. He will make a new creation where sin and death are no more. Those who have trusted in Him will be raised to everlasting life to live with Him there. Maybe that sounds too good to be true, but it is the hope that a follower of Jesus has. God’s restored purpose for humanity has already begun through Jesus and in His followers. That purpose will be fully restored on that day when God makes all things new.

How can you be part of this? How can this story become yours, so that it shapes your view of the world and how to live in it?

First, believe. Believe that this is true. Believe what the Bible says about why we were made, what went wrong, and what God has done to restore and reconcile us through Jesus.

Second, surrender. Give up the desire to call the shots and allow Jesus to be your Lord. Tell Him you want to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and that you want to live life His way rather than yours.

And third, relationship. Grow your relationship with God through prayer and reading Scripture. Grow relationships with other followers of Jesus in a church, who can help you and strengthen you. You are part of a new family now, with God as your Father and many new brothers and sisters around you.

It’s not a secret that I’m not a pastor who’s big on formality, which extends to the attention I pay to the “church calendar” (not meaning our particular Bridge Church calendar, but meaning the seasonal rhythms that shape most Catholic and mainline Protestant churches). When people talk about “Whitsun”, for example, I have zero idea what they’re talking about (I just now looked it up but have already forgotten). However, I do know that this Wednesday, March 5, is “Ash Wednesday”. I know that this marks the beginning of a 40 day period known as Lent that leads up to Easter. Many Christians will use this period of time to fast from something in their life as a way of preparing themselves spiritually for Easter. Let’s be clear that there’s nothing at all in the Bible that would require the observance of Lent- it’s not even mentioned. However, many Christians have found it to be a helpful practice. Carolyn has decreed that we will be fasting from sugary treats for Lent this year, unless we’re at someone’s house and they offer us dessert. I’m fully on board with this, if only to stave off repeated requests from a certain one of our children for “a treat”.

Another reason I think Lent is a good practice in some form or another is because it may be the only time some Christians fast. And fasting absolutely is a biblical practice, both in the Old Testament and New. Fasting is intentionally abstaining from something. Most commonly that something is food, but it can be anything. Some people fast from social media or from coffee or from alcohol or from Netflix. They’re taking a break from something that’s a normal presence in their lives. I think fasting is so good because it counteracts our natural 21st century Western expectation to get everything we want, and to get it now. We are not people who generally know how to wait or how to say no to our desires. Our technological advancements, for all the benefits they bring, also shape us in a way that makes us terrible at delayed gratification. This is a problem for anyone who wants to follow Jesus. After all, he said that anyone who wanted to be his disciple would need to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. A disciple of Jesus is someone who is willing to say no to everything else in order to say a resounding yes to him. That means fasting is a kind of training ground for what we’re called to do in Christ.

What does that have to do with Romans 7, which I preached on Sunday? As I read that text, it’s interesting to me that Paul specifically picks out coveting in verse 7. He says that if it weren’t for the law that says “do not covet” (Exodus 20:17), he wouldn’t have known what coveting was. Of all the laws, this is the one that he singles out. He goes on to say that sin seizes the opportunity that laws like this provide and actually increases the sinful desires in us. Again, in context, the example Paul is using is the desire of coveting.

Really quickly, what does it mean to covet? A simple definition is that it is a desire to have what someone else has. There’s an element of coveting in that first sin in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 (the more I look at the text, the more textured it becomes). The serpent tells Eve she can have the knowledge of good and evil that God has and become like Him. In other word, the temptation is to covet something that belongs to God. Could we also not say that there is an element of coveting in much of the evil and sin in the world? How many wars have been fought because one group of people wanted what another group had? How many families have been splintered because someone wanted another person’s spouse? How many people have had their lives shaken, or even taken, because of a robbery- robbery being inevitably driven by covetousness? 

To bring this together, the desire of covetousness is incredibly dangerous, and fasting is one of the best antidotes to it. In fasting, we’re reminded that God is enough for us (see Jesus’ response to the devil in Matthew 4:4). In fasting, we practice contentedness in Him. In fasting, we are reminding ourselves that through God’s strength, we can say no to our desires for what we do not have. There’s no fasting rule that’s being given here (that would undermine everything I said on Sunday!). However, I do believe there’s wisdom in observing Lent. Consider fasting over the next month and a half or so as a way of turning your heart from coveting and towards contentedness in what the Lord has already given you.