Here are Michael Frost’s thoughts on the purpose of the church. I love his movie trailer analogy.

I’ll admit up front, my respect for Brett McCracken is growing quickly. After reading his answers to my interview with him, and having just finished his first book, Hipster Christianity (due out August 1st), I’ve realized that this is a guy who is a remarkably challenging voice for Christians and the Church. He avoids relying on “shock and awe” to communicate, he speaks from a position unabashedly sold out to Christ and His Church, and he articulates himself well. In…

Here are a couple of quotes I used this past weekend from Francis Chan’s book, the Forgotten God. “It is easy to use the phrase ‘God’s will for my life’ as an excuse for inaction or even disobedience. It’s much less demanding to think about God’s will for your future than it is to ask Him what He wants you to do in the next ten minutes. It’s safer to commit to following Him someday instead of this day.” “You…

If you came to one of our 14 Easter services at Central this weekend, you heard us close the message with a quote from John Ortberg, pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian church in California. This comes from an Easter message that he did in the past. We used just the last part of this but here is a longer version of it. Christ provides the hope for the ultimate crisis in our lives. He has paid the cost of forgiveness!…

One of the coolest experiences of our visit to Egypt was seeing the Cave Church in Cairo. It is the largest Christian church in the Middle East. To get to it, we went through what is known as Garbage City. In Cairo, there is a lot of trash all around the streets. One of the reasons is that Muslims don’t usually touch trash as it makes them unclean. As a result, it is the Egyptian Christians that take care of…