Writing
Essays and working ideas from more than fifteen years of writing about faith, leadership, discipleship, the church, family, and life in Austin.
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A few essays that introduce the questions and convictions behind this site.
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When is a Group a Church?
Church planting lives in long seasons of in between, where it is unclear whether you are forming a group or shepherding a church. Clarity does not rush that process, it gives it direction and a trajectory,…
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Why Plant Churches
The question in Austin has shifted from why not plant a church to why we even need more of them. Austin is not a city saturated with churches, it is a city unevenly served, and the…
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2025 in Review
Three words kept rising to the surface as I looked back over the year: striving, selling, serving. More of a posture than a plan, and the thread running through them is that planning has begun to…
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Weakness is Not Inability
Weakness is capacity under strain. Inability is capacity removed. I confused the two for years and it cost me, so when I quit a run this week and walked the last quarter, I took it as…
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The Church Isn’t a Safe Place
The church was never meant to be a safe place as the world defines safety. It exists to make you holy and obedient, not comfortable, and my worry is that the mood of the day is…
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Gratitude for Partnership in the Gospel
Christian community is not built on consumerism but on covenant partnership, sustained not by preference but by promise. I used to teach at The Stone that we should aim for mission over community, and I have…
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Revolutionary
We use revolutionary to mean a leap forward, but a revolution is simply a turning, one complete cycle that brings you right back where you started. Most real change works that way, a slow turning and…
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Settled
Settled cuts two ways. It can mean contentment or it can mean quiet resignation, what I would call spiritualized compromise, and the question I keep asking is whether I have settled into God or just settled…
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The Longing Beneath the Form: Ancient Future and Nostalgic Novelty
Ancient future and nostalgic novelty look like opposites, but they come from the same desire, to belong to something lasting, to be from somewhere and to be going somewhere. The form is not the same as…
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More Than Seen: The Better News of Being Known—and Indwelled
I feel so seen is a phrase I hear often, and being seen by God is real and good. But it is not the fullest expression of divine love. It is good to be seen, better…
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Why Multiplication Feels So Far Away
After nearly twenty years of praying for multiplication in Austin, I have come to think the barrier is not our structures or our strategies. The root is fear, and we seem to be really, really scared…
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When Life Seems Strange
Leaving The Austin Stone for the Greater Austin Mission Society has felt uncertain, disorienting, and foreign, and I kept telling myself life should not feel this way. But Scripture calls us strangers and exiles on the…