Central UMC Blog

Originally, this blog post was going to be one rooted in the concepts I've been personally growing through over the past year – namely vulnerability, fear, and the tension of living in a state of the in-between of knowing the love of God, but not yet experiencing the full reality of His...

Brennan Manning, in his book, The Furious Longing of God, writes that when we personally come to know we are God’s beloved, we will internally move in our understanding from "I should pray" to "I must pray."   This past summer, in a season of personal stress, upheaval, and...

At the time of my writing this, I am a half-week removed from coming home from Memphis with a group of our students and student ministry volunteers. Partnering with the organization Service Over Self, our team of sixteen repaired roofs on homes in underserved neighborhoods. It was an incredible...

Christmas, if we are being honest, can be both a time of joy and longing. Advent reminds us that, like the Jews awaiting their savior, we are in the time between. A great hope is before us, but it is not here yet. We know and believe in the promise of unending, joyful life, but life presently is...

I am a sucker for personality tests. Whether it is Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, or Birkman, I know my type and am probably a little too proud of it. This might be because personality tests are effective at building up strengths and softening the blow of weaknesses, or it may be because my...

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to be able to attend the New Room Conference with our leadership team. New Room’s mission is to sow for a Great Awakening during our lifetime. As they spoke to us about revivals in the past, a clear theme emerged: revivals are always accompanied by...

For the bulk of my life, I did not consider myself to be a politically inclined person. However, because of a weird sequence of events during my junior year of college, I found myself enrolled in a class on Machiavellian political thought. Over a semester and thousands of pages of reading and...

A few weeks ago, I was in Kansas City for a concert. A few of my friends from college live up there so I spent most of my time with them learning about their lives. During that time, I ended up meeting a lot of their friends and talking to them. The bulk of those conversations went the same way...