I am deeply saddened to hear about the loss of Mr Dean Strickland. Just the other day I was telling Oasis about a few different men who were “like a dad” to me when I was living at the Falcon Childrens Home. Dean’s name was on that list. I’ll never forget the little moments with …
Hey Church!! Happy Friday! Here are a thousand thoughts, or as I usually call it, a brain dump! 😉 -My wife and I are celebrating her 29th birthday today, pray for us because I keep getting older while she stays the same age. -I’m preaching LIVE this Sunday! I’ve been prerecording everything this summer, but …
When I was a child my dad and his friends would drink beer, smoke joints, and play Axis & Allies (a board game that involves strategy and conquering the world). The smell of beer and weed permeated our tiny apartment in the ghetto of Oak Cliff, just south of downtown Dallas. My Dad is dead …
When COVID first hit, I starting focusing on the potentially negative outcomes for the church. I was concerned about the community, concerned about our small business owners, concerned about the money, concerned about Sunday morning, concerned about our future, etc. Not having a building of our own during this time has been very scary for …
Final Thought on battling discouragement… Have you ever been discouraged about the future? Maybe you’ve been asking the question, “what if?” What if I fail. What if they walk away. What if it breaks. What if… …I heard someone say “what i.f.” stands for WHAT. I. FEAR. One of the reasons people get so discouraged …
Following up on yesterdays post… Yesterday I started writing about discouragement. Near the end of that post, I wrote an entire list of the “types of people” who make me want to jump off a bridge… The person who thinks it is their gifting to point out every problem when an idea is discussed. The …
Discouragement / dis·cour·age·ment / disˈkərijmənt/ At some point, all of us face it… For me, there are plenty of days when I’m not hitting on all cylinders…especially lately. At times, COVID-19 has had me wondering if what I’m doing is actually making a difference. Back in March, I went from being a pastor to a …
There was a big push for churches to reach “millennials.” Every leadership conference I attended had at least one breakout session that was supposed to teach us the secrets about how to reach this entire generation of desperately lost snowflakes. One session at a conference in North Raleigh felt more like a discovery channel commentary …
Because of this, Oasis became a place where people truly belonged before they believed, and they were accepted even if they weren’t “behaving” like a Christian. Like you, I have seen plenty of churches advertise something like “belong before you believe” or something similar, but for me this phrase was so much more than a …
Our church services were getting better and better. I was proud to invite my friends to church on Sundays. Joel and Matt were doing an incredible job building their ministry teams to accommodate the growth we were experiencing. There was one girl on the worship team named Kate who had been a contestant on the …
Im sorry y’all My recent string of blog posts might be confusing, let me clarify. I’m not writing this to teach you anything or to motivate you in some way. In fact, you probably won’t learn anything except how inept and unqualified I am as a leader/pastor. My intention with these posts is to present …
The next week I was sitting across from Todd on our home office couch, deliberating in my head whether or not I should go get a counseling degree or complete some kind of training. I recalled the countless other scenarios from when I was a youth pastor that should have clued me in on the …
One day, after 3 back to back coffee meetings with a couple of staff members and a new family in our church, I noticed that my phone had about thirty unread text messages. A twenty-something year old married guy who I actually considered a friend was relentlessly texting me. He requested that I call him …
I was adopted in the eleventh grade and transferred from a large public school in the city to a small private Christian school in the suburbs. For the first time in my life, nobody got cut from the school baseball team. Everyone made the team, including me, and the other homeschool kid who was wearing …
We followed the directions from all the church startup kits and training conferences. After a ton of marketing and Facebook hype, 396 people showed up on launch Sunday. I think most of those people were family members of the launch team from out of town, because 8 weeks later the church had less than 200 …
It was the year 2013 and I was 29 years old. I was about forty pounds overweight, sporting a faux hawk, and babbling about my dream to start a new church that would supposedly change a city. After digesting all the online starter-kit training videos for church planters, I was convinced I needed a launch …
Whats up, Oasis! Happy Friday 🙂 The last time we had an in person church gathering was March 8. When I first announced that we’d be moving our services online, I assumed it might last a few weeks. Here we are, SIXTEEN weeks later, and I’m getting really excited about the prospect of RELAUNCHING …
Preface. It all seemed to happen overnight. One evening I exported a .pdf with the title, “Vision & Values,” and the next day I was the lead pastor of Oasis Church. I thought God was just waiting for me to design a logo, build a website, and put some shine on my instagram so that …
I WISH I was the same person that I present to you on stage, on Facebook, on Insta. But I’m not. I am such a CONTRADICTION sometimes. My behavior often contradicts my values. My actions often contradict my beliefs, And my life contradicts my “position” in the church. Often… -I have a really hard heart toward people, -I am really …
Control is an ILLUSION I cannot control what happens to me I cannot control what people think of me I cannot control my family I cannot control the weather I cannot control how others treat me Self-Control is NOT an illusion: I can control how I respond I can control what I eat I can …