Blog (Page 19)
5 Free Things To Do With Kids This Summer
Temperatures are rising and the kids are finally out of school. This summer, make the entire family happy with these free kids activities that are fun for the everyone and won’t break the bank. Now you have a few extra bucks to put aside for that next big family vacation, the Labor Day block party, or to spend on yourself, we won’t judge. Family Fridays Every Friday join the West Des Moines community at Jaycee Park for a free lunch…
Is the Bible Boring?
As a pastor, I shouldn’t be admitting this, but yes, the Bible is boring in some parts. On January 1, I began a reading plan to read through the Bible in a year. That means over the past 3 months I have read countless boring parts: genealogies, numerous censuses (or is it censii?), hundreds of verses of odd rules and regulations, and various boundary markers and travel routes. It’s at this point in trying to read the Bible that many…
Miss a Little, Miss a Lot
Have you ever been given a task to plan or a project to oversee only to have your best-laid plans go horribly awry? I have. Before I was a pastor, I was in bank operations. I remember a time when I spent months researching and preparing to implement a new system for the bank. After doing everything I thought possible to prepare for the change, everything that could possible go wrong, did go wrong. It took almost twelve months to…
Unity in a Nation of Disunity
As I was reading though my journal this morning, reflecting on yesterday’s message calling us to unity, I ran across my entry from November 9, 2016, the day after the election. While the election may be over, the divisiveness and division is not. I share this now because it seems as appropriate today as it did 9 months ago when I originally wrote it. The Day After an Election November 9, 2016 Congratulations, America. You’ve survived another election. But are…
Book Review: The Invisible War
Chip Ingram’s book on a Christian’s spiritual battle between Satan and his evil forces is a balanced take between the extremism of seeing a demon under every rock or ruling out the existence of demons altogether. This book is broken down into 4 sections, with each section receiving an executive summary of the main ideas with all the pertinent Bible verses at the beginning. This makes the book an incredible resource on the topic of spiritual warfare. Much of the…
Why God Deserves a Second Chance
Introduction A lot is written across the internet telling people that God gives us all a second chance, but what about the person who has given up on God? There is a scarcity of information trying to persuade a person to Give God a Second Chance. Now think about that, trillions of articles and pages on the internet, and I couldn’t find more than a page or two arguing for why God is worth a second shot. It baffles me because…
Why Did I Give Up On God?
Everywhere you look today it seems we are met with more and more reports of churches in decline, people walking away from faith, and people giving up on God. Why this is happening? Unless we are willing to ask what I think can be some very real, but very difficult questions, we will never understand. Does God even deserve a second chance?
Community Impact – Kid Cafe
Check out Kid Cafe, one of our events from summer 2016. Feeding kids at a local park was just one of the may way we invested in our community. Hear more about the incredible success of our Kid Cafe at Jaycee Park in West Des Moines.
All In: A Waste of Talent
Introduction Happy Birthday, Ashworth Road! It was in this month 45 years ago, November 1971, that 43 people came together for the very first worship services of a brand new church with a desire to reach this growing community of West Des Moines. As we approach this Thanksgiving season and celebrate our 45th birthday as a church, we have a lot to be thankful for: the baptisms this morning, another year of service and missions to our community and around…
All In: Firstfruits
Sermon Podcast Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Introduction Today I’m excited to continue our message series “All In” — where we are looking at how we can live our lives Taking Risks and Trusting God to make a Kingdom Impact. Priorities: We began this series with Amy teaching on the book of Haggai and specifically on how the Israelites had prioritized their own lives over God and restoring the temple. And we compared that to…
All In: Sacrifice
Introduction We are in a series called “All In — Taking Risks, Trusting God, Kingdom Impact.” Every week we are looking at a different aspect of faith and asking the question, “Am I all in?” The first week, Pastor Amy challenged us to look at our priorities: how we live, how we spend our time and our money. Does what we give prominence to reveal the priority of God in our lives? Last week, Pastor Stephen did an incredible and…