In response to my post on Lent someone asked about fasting. What is it? Pastor Blake, Thank you for this! Very informative and helpful information. I have a novice question... What IS fasting, traditionally? Is it abstaining from all food? Just meat? Anything you'll miss? Is it from Sun up to Sun down, or 24/7? And is the point to remind us to pray? Pray about what sp...

We saw a principle emerge from Matthew 6:5-15 last week: Resting in the eternal love of the Father leads to a consistently active prayer life. Prayer in most religions are weighed by repetition or length. But Jesus gives us a pattern of prayer that is short and simple. Let me help you remember what we said. Muslim prayers in the Koran are poetic, very sublime but they must...

What is Advent? Since the fourth century, God’s people have especially yearned for Jesus’ second coming during a four-Sunday celebration leading up to Christmas, a season called Advent. ...

Christians throughout the ages have prayed using a technique called lectio divina - a slow, contemplative praying of the Scriptures. Lectio divina is a latin phrase that literally means “divine reading.” This ancient practice has been kept alive in the Christian monastic tradition. It is not a mystical reading of Scripture; it is rather an extremely practical way of p...

Trinity's vision is what we want to see in the future. The mission is how we are going to accomplish what we hope to see. The vision motivates. The mission activates. I want you to see both side by side: Trinity's Vision: To see grace change everything by bringing social, culturally and spiritual renewal to Owasso. Trinity's Mission:to enjoy the Triune God by showing tha...

As I'm preparing to preach on James 2:8-26, I'm reminded of an important era in American religion that I want to share with you. One of my colleagues at the university where I was a campus minister was a friend named Paul Raushenbusch. He was the Associate Dean of Religious Life and is now the senior religion editor at the Huffington Post. We disagree on almost every theo...

How does one live out the gospel in parenting? There is an old tale that Martin Luther once told about a drunken peasant who falls off his donkey to one side only to get back up and fall off to the other. Christians, Luther says, are like the drunken peasant. We fall over to license on one side, and then get back in line with the Gospel (Gal 2:14) only to fall the other d...

Some things seem so random they must be from God. Today, I was working on the Trinity Order of Worship for this Sunday while on the train from Princeton Junction to NYC. Somewhere between the Call to Worship and formatting the first song, a 40-something-year-old man in business-casual attire came up to me with his hand out and said, "Hi, I'm Steve. Do you want to talk abou...

On the drive to NJ/NY, somewhere in Ohio, a lady from Rock Tavern, NY called my cell phone to ask where we got our church's vision and content on the website. I told her Trinity's story, of our many committed brother and sisters, of how Chad Steven helped us with the design while I wrote the vision and mission. She wanted to know how we got to our understanding of discipl...

Remember that I want this blog to be practical but sometimes big ideas lead to extremely practical conclusions. Read ahead knowing that this post is going to get practicaleventually, I promise. This morning as I was preparing for tonight's service, my father-in-law forwarded me a book review from the Wall Street Journal written by Bradford Wilcox, a gentlemen I've never m...