One formed me. The other entertained me. On a sunny March afternoon in 2014, I found myself jumping on the L train from Manhattan to Williamsburg to interview a young, urban pastor named Carl Lentz in his luxury waterfront apartment. A trendy evangelical magazine wanted me to profile him. With its nightclub venues and award-winning worship music, his Hillsong church was attracting thousands of diverse young people from around New York City. Lentz is now featured in an FX documentary, The Secrets of Hillsong, which examines his string of affairs and the embattled church he left behind. The four-episode exposé… [...]

Conservative and progressive Christians favor different approaches, and both have their place. What would the parable of the Good Samaritan look like today? In the United States, the man lying beside the road may well be dying from an overdose of fentanyl. Over the course of the pandemic, social isolation combined with a flood of super-potent synthetic fentanyl pushed overdose deaths in the US to unimaginable levels, from 70,000 in 2019 to 107,000 in 2021. Will we, like the Levite and priest in Luke 10:25–37, keep our distance? Journalist Beth Macy’s book Dopesick chronicled the current opioid crisis, inspiring a… [...]

The Spirit is at work, but so are the mechanisms around high-production sets. “Bigger!” said the voice in my in-ear monitor. I was on stage in a dark room, nearly blinded by spotlights. It was my first time leading worship at a big regional conference for college students, and one of the production managers in the sound booth prompted me to raise my hands higher, move more, clap more, jump, be more physically demonstrative. I had always known conference worship sets were orchestrated, but this was the first time I could see the minutiae. At one point, I was told… [...]

If only I had chosen another partner... If only I could eat healthier... If only I had more money and no debt... Things often don’t turn out as we expect. People don’t act according to our expectations—and sometimes we believe God is late or doesn’t even remember us.  In the Bible, we read about Lazarus, who was very ill, and how Jesus apparently delayed His journey to reach his friend. Let’s read John 11:5-6:  Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was... [...]

Many of us have raised children who were afraid of the dark. Everyday objects such as a pile of clothes on the floor tend to turn into a scary mound of lava in the mind of an adventurous toddler. We are a source of safety for our little ones who come to us in the still of the night, walking through dark rooms and hallways, to whisper, “I’m scared.” A part of my strategy to provide comfort to them is to use nightlights to dispel the darkness of the room. This light gives a sense of security and... [...]

Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, Moses didn’t give you bread from heaven. My Father did. And now he offers you the true bread from heaven. The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” “Sir,” they said, “give us that bread every day.” Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:32-35 NLT) For years, I lived in a state of hunger for substance and... [...]