Kirk’s Blog (Page 9)
A Parenting Pathway
Recently, we interviewed CrossBridge parents, asking for practical ways they discipled their children in the context of the home – we got some great answers! We also asked what were the most important ways they engage in the body of Christ -the church. Again, we received solid advice. We learned a couple of really important things… First, we…
Parenting and Free Will
No one struggles with the lie of condemnation like parents do. We often carry the weight of all our mistakes and the would’ve, could’ve, should’ves of the past as it relates to how we parented. No one speaks more negatively to me…than me. (Know what I mean?) But it’s important to remember, while it’s undeniable that we are…
Fighting Worry
I often wake up in the morning and am confronted by an immediate wave of anxiety related to what I’ve got on my plate or a general sense of “Not being good enough.” I can’t run away from these thoughts. Jumping straight to email or checking the news only serves as a temporary distraction, but it won’t defeat these thoughts. Diving straight away into my work…
How God Keeps Score
What matters to God? What is it that he gets excited about? As a guy who gets up on stage every week to speak to people, it’s tempting for me to get excited when Sunday attendance trends upward. But does that equate to points on God’s scoreboard?…I’m not so sure. But when teenagers get on stage after spending their summer in Indonesia and…
Ordinary People doing really Cool Things
This Sunday at our gathering we’re going to hear story after story of ordinary people doing really cool things. It’s going to be…well…really cool. The reason I want us to hear these stories is because the only requirement for any of us having really cool stories of our own is simply to say, “Yes!” to Jesus. In Psalm…
A Real but Different Grief
Two funerals of personal friends in two months have reacquainted me with grief again. This morning, on the first anniversary of my dad’s passing, I’ve been thinking about the nature of grief. Grief is real, isn’t it? Faith in Christ doesn’t change the reality that we grieve. After all, I grieve every time my daughters leave again for college and I know I won’t…
A Time of Reckoning
This past weekend, the New York Times printed an article outlining the claims of sexual harassment against a well known pastor of a church that has one of the largest Sunday attendances in our nation. This isn’t the first article about this pastor and, though I have no personal knowledge of the situation, the sheer number of women willing to stand courageously…
Too Small a Basket
Once when CrossBridge hosted an Easter Egg Hunt, we had something like 10,000 eggs hidden. We had about 300 kids show up, which meant every child could have something like 33 eggs! I remember one child in tears because her basket was too small! She could only hold about 15 eggs. Fortunately we had a plastic grocery bag nearby and she dumped her eggs into it so she…
Bugs on My Windshield
In preparation for our vacation back in June, I’d gotten the car washed and vacuumed and cleaned out of all the stuff that seems to clutter up our cars on a regular basis. Everything was neat and in order as we headed out west on I-10, driving the long, straight, desolate road that stretches to Big Bend. By the time we arrived about six hours later, our car…