The Pierced Pastor

I'm sure that most of you know this about me all ready, but I'm a fairly cynical person. I like to call it being honest and authentic, but as I really reflect on it, it's mostly the unwillingness to allow myself to be excited about anything because of a nervousness that I'll somehow be let down. The students at my church always say that Aaron will hype everything, but Jeff will tell you if it's really going to be any good. I'm mostly pretty happy about who I am, but a small part of me often wishes I could be as positive and as excited about things as Aaron is. I'm realizing though that in my Christian life this cynicism has often caused me to miss out on some amazing things. My natural response when I'm confronted with an emotional experience is to assume that it's manufactured and that somehow I'm being manipulated and so I immediately turn my back on it because I don't want to be forced anywhere. There have been times in my life where I...

Last week I had the opportunity to co-lead our high school mission trip to Chicago. Our team consisted of 6 leaders and 15 students and I think it's safe to say we all had a blast. But as much fun as we had, that wasn't really the reason for the trip. There's something to be said about taking time away from the busyness of everyday life and immersing yourself into fellowship and service with a group of other believers. Over the last week the 21 of us grew closer to each other as well as closer to God. When Aaron, the Director of StudentLife at our church, my good friend, and my boss, and I were talking through the reasons for this trip the biggest thing we wanted for our students were to break some preconceptions about people, specifically the homeless, and to cause our students to ask themselves what God's heart truly is. We talk so much to our students about love, heck the last post I made was about God's heart and love, and on a trip like this so often we go i...

At my church we sing a song with a lyric that says “break my heart for what breaks yours” and today my heart is broken. I have often said that as Christians we have a heart for people because God is a god with a heart for people. In my prayers I so often ask God to give me his heart for people, when I read my bible I’m drawn to stories of Kind David because he is described as a man after God’s own heart, I cannot imagine a better way to be described. It pains me to admit that when I pray for a heart after God’s own most often what I really mean is a vague feeling of love for everyone, the desire to “do good” and “serve people selflessly.” So often I link the feeling of “love” with a feeling of happiness and of joy, but love is so much more than that. Over the last week God has answered my prayer in a way that I was not necessarily expecting. My heart is heavy, it breaks for a broken a world, a world where bad things happen to people. I don’t say good people, or bad people,...