This blog is Pastor Jay's weekly musings about God's Word, God's world, and God's call to our culture. We hope they encourage, challenge, and inform you. Sign up to recieve them in your email.
Schools have always followed wherever the gospel goes. Schools meet needs that arise from gospel compulsions. The gospel compels us to know God more and thus learning to read allows us to read his holy Word. The gospel compels us to glorify God and we can do that better when we see his world accurately, which history and science allows. The gospel compels us to love our fa...
Keep ReadingEveryone has to deal with fear about something at some point in their lives. Yes, there are those people out there that are super talented, highly connected and powerful, and gifted with all kinds of resources; and it can seem that they fear nothing. But if you dig long enough and deep enough, Eureka!, you will strike fear. The source and cause of the fear is irrelevant at...
Keep ReadingWhen Open Door Fellowship first started, 2022 wasn't just 10 years away, it felt like it was a million years away. There were so many uncertainties, and no one knew what to expect. I had never started a church, let alone pastored a church on my own. None of the people from Church of the Open Door who came with the plant had ever done a church plant before either. We knew t...
Keep ReadingFew things bring panic to the souls of many like the thought of sharing the gospel. Each potential encounter has its own panic-inducing features. To share with a stranger means potentially upsetting a nice casual encounter with accusations of being a religious nut-job imposing beliefs on people. But share with a friend or relative and you quite possibly sour a relationship...
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Thursday morning met us with a new addition to our church sign. Someone had given up some of their evening to spray paint "Facist" across the front. "Facist". Huh. Do we have a thing for faces? Yes, we absolutely love faces. We love all faces. We love the faces of those who are born and those who are still in the womb. We love faces of all sizes, even the smallest that ar...
Keep ReadingThe Scripture says in Psalm 139 that people are "fearfully and wonderfully made." We see this regularly in medical discoveries, but I want to show you another way that the nature of people is getting revealed. What is that way? YouTube. That's right. Sure, it is not as heady and academic as the inner mechanics of a cell or the brain, but it is still revealing the fearful a...
Keep ReadingWays to know that membership is becoming more than it is supposed to be. ...
Keep ReadingDid this blog get hacked? What's happening here? Is pastor Jay finally losing it? Just last week there was a post about why Pastor Jay did not watch the show The Chosen, and now a post about watching it? Do we need an intervention? What's happening here is a good opportunity to address something that will be a regular occurrence. God's people must always be ready to dea...
Keep ReadingIt seems that Christendom is starting to be delivered from the cheesy movies that seemed ubiquitous a few decades ago. The production quality and acting are getting to a level that can at least be stomached. This is a good and blessed thing. While excellence and faithfulness are not a necessary pairing, there should be a desire for excellence, and a pursuit for it should...
Keep ReadingOur church has been thinking a lot about baptism, the Lord's supper, church membership and how all of them tie together. One of the areas where this raises big questions is concerning children. Should children be baptized and brought into membership and the Lord's supper? As always, we turn to God's word for our answer. Were children baptized in the New Testament? There ...
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