What inspires you. From time to time I run across a statement that I say wow! That comment is awesome. I could not have said it better. Some of these quotes stick with us for a life time and have a great impact on how we live.

Today I am starting a new list. This list is every awesome quote that was ever made by anyone who ever lived. However, I’m going to need your help! Please add any sweet quote that you know to the list below so that I and others can enjoy them. Thanks!

Before I was called into ministry I studied art. Over the course of the last few years I have created some digital pieces created completely on the computer. Much of my art is simple and in recent years has become very black and white. Please enjoy the work and let me know what you think.

The Artwork below was created between 2006-2009. Click on the thumbnail below to enlarge the picture.

It’s been almost two months since I launched this site and it is time for a redo. That’s right, it is time for me to start over. When I built this site I had never worked with WordPress and only had experience in Joomla and Druple (sounds like Droople. I have no idea why they just didn’t spell it that way in the first place). I didn’t think it would be to hard to learn WordPress, but I still had somewhat of a learning curve.

This was my first crack at WordPress, but since then I have create several other WordPress sites for other people and all of their sites look better than mine! Therefore, it is time to do away with green/blue color scheme (going to white) and all the other little nasty things I don’t like. I’m thinking simple, elegant with clear call to action buttons. Yea… This new site is going to look nice.

Ok Dreamweaver… Lets do some CSS coding! (Only a nerd would find this exciting.)

There are 1,746,070 in the San Fernando Valley and less than 6% are evangelical Christians. Who will reach the community? Encino has Over 40,000 people, but there is only 1 evangelical church. Studio City has ZERO evangelical churches. Sherman Oaks over 52,280 people and not one evangelical church. The need is great, but the harvesters are few! Before Jesus returned to Heaven he called his disciples to be his, “witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8. The fields are ripe with over 1,700,000 people. Join the call and partner with us as we continue the mission of reaching all people.

I made this video for the San Fernando Valley Southern Baptist Convention as part of their church planting program.

What does a pastor do when he begins to question his calling?

It is no secret that as a pastor I have been pretty beat up by the church. Most pastors at some point of time, if not most of the time, get pretty beat up when they are involved in ministry. It is part of the responsibility we accept when becoming a pastor. However, for me it was starting to get pretty draining. I had taken a few to many blows in a short period of time and I was starting to wonder if this was all worth it. Maybe a job at a Home Depot would be better choice for me and my family. That is when my friend and I sat down and had a good conversation starting at 11pm. (Why do all good conversations start so late?)

I was on my way home when I stopped in to see a friend of mine and began talking about the church as a whole. We were not talking about a building or any particular group of believers that meet together regularly, but rather we were talking about everyone who claims to be a Christ follower. My friend has observed that much of the American church has become so fat in their contentment that they have ceased being effective in our culture. In essence, the church had grown custom to hearing encouraging non challenging messages and happy to keep their faith to themselves. Jesus calls these type of Christians lukewarm and that he would rather Christians be hot or cold, because lukewarm Christians make him sick (Revelation 3:16). His response to his observation has been to separate himself from the church. He looks at American Christians as a separate group that he is disappointed with. This is a friend who attended church all his life and went on to seminary; a friend who has lost his confidence in the church.

Listening to him was discouraging as I could see his point on much of what he had to say. However, what I saw in him was just as disheartening. His loss of respect for the church, those who claim to be Christians, has built up a sense of disgust and disillusionment. In his voice you can sense a hopelessness that has resulted in apathy. He could be a man after God’s own heart who reaches out to all people for Christ, but instead he has been pushed in to dormancy. Interestingly enough, there are others like him and they are no more effective than the very church they are frustrated with.

Are those my options? Am I to submit to my own battles and fall into one of these two groups? Am I to be fatten calf happy in my comforts but no more effective than an ad in the yellow pages. Or am I to be a dead corpse quietly waiting in my casket to be buried? What if those are not my only two options?

That night as I left my friends house I had a long three hour talk with God. The period I had gone through, and still going through, took me out by the ankles and after such a beating I was just getting use to staying down and not bothering to get back up. But after my talk with God, I felt my heart stir with anger as I came to realize there is still a fight in me. God had not abandoned me and I was not about to leave my post. I apologized to God for not getting up earlier and began to rely on his strength to lift me back up. I am not to fall into contentment of the status quo nor am I going to fall into the shallow grave of despair. It is time for me to put on my full armor of God (Ephesians 6:11-18) and get to work. My friend was right, there needs to be a reawakening of the church in America. I may not yet know how to be a catalyst to waken this sleeping body, but I’m going to try everything I can until I die.

Followers of Christ, if you are tired, hurt, beat up, disillusioned, content with the status quo or just going through the motions, this is not a time to lie down and die; this is a time to stand up and roar. My armor of God is on, is yours?