The other day some River friends asked me to share about my history being on staff with the church. “It’s not pretty,” I warned them. When I joined The River’s staff team in the fall of 2004, my timing couldn’t have been worse. We were in a time of...
I love buffets. Whisper “all you can eat” across the room, and I’ll hear you and be ready to go. My favorite things in Las Vegas are the breakfast buffets where I can have as many pieces of bacon and crab legs as I want for $15. I love buffets because I can have a...
No one has ever mistaken me for an outdoorsy person. All the way back to my toddler days, I’ve largely had an aversion to being (or at least feeling) dirty, and the adventure of camping has pretty much no traction with me. I hold this in tension with the fact that I still...
Fitting in. Belonging. Acceptance. God placed those desires in our hearts. He created us to live in community. And yet, when you throw a bunch of broken people together, God’s ideal plans often don’t play out the way he intended. Announcements about my upcoming high...
Five years ago, I took a college course on love. Among the list of texts for the class, along with the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Plato, was a reference to the song "The Greatest Love Of All" by Whitney Houston. If you're not familiar with the song, Houston sings that...
I am fortunate to live near San Jose State University, within walking distance of my place of work on campus. I don’t drive, so I rely on the bus, light rail, and the occasional ride from friends to get beyond downtown San Jose. While taking public transportation is...
It’s been five days without an Internet connection or cell phone coverage. The nearest town is almost two hours away. We are literally in the middle of nowhere. Two hundred eighty people are sharing 4 toilets. It’s hard to believe I’m not in a foreign...
Recently I visited my parents’ house down in Almaden Valley to clean up my old bedroom. As I went through my stuff, I came across a drawer where I used to shove old graded assignments in case I ever needed them again. As I went through them, I saw the giant red letters at the...
I wrote a script for my family, which featured our future, redeveloped backyard as the backdrop. It went something like this: my daughter leaves for college (yes, she will) in six years. Between now and then, she and her brother need to create fun childhood memories in our home and...
Or could the mundane actually be profound? Since moving to the Bay Area three years ago, I’ve experienced significant development in my walk with God and my prayer life—possibly greater strides than I’ve ever experienced. (Signs of this popped up in my earlier blog...