I'm very comfortable in a room with thousands of people.

As a pastor, you get invited into the most poignant moments of people's lives. Whether it's a wedding or a funeral or a hospital visit, you get invited into the center of the event, whether or not you know the people.

If your faith is threatened by something that's true, then it wasn't much of a faith to begin with, was it?

My experience is that lots of people go to church, sing the songs, tell the story, etc but have profound ambivalence about God.

For many, 'desire' is a bad word, something we're supposed to 'give up for God.' That kind of thinking can be really destructive because it teaches people to deny their hearts, their true selves.

What does happen constantly with all kinds of people I meet is they say "I had this encounter with Jesus, can you help me understand it..." The labels, more than ever, simply aren't big enough to contain what the cosmic Christ is up to in the world.

Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.