Joe Holland

I love playing ultimate frisbee. I’m pretty sure my GPA in college would have been a few points higher had I not spent so much time tossing a plastic disc…

The luxury of the unexamined life is never the luxury of the Christian. Self-examination and a preaching of the Gospel to your own heart is the duty of every Christian–always.…

Because crisis is common to the human condition so is the cry for deliverance. A hand on a hot stove recoils just as a human facing danger cries out for…

I’ve been in ministry long enough now (well over a decade) to see friends enter the ministry and then leave it. Some of those exits have been for honorable reasons…

I was a theological polyglot before my arrival at seminary. It took three years to sort through the junk drawer of Evangelical aphorisms that filled my head. But seminary did…

I wish I knew what Peter was thinking when he was looking at Paul–a ministerial acquaintance at best–who was now confronting him publicly. Yes, publicly. At least some portion of…

Christmas is the time of year that Evangelicals register their shock. Christians are shocked when checkout clerks say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” They are shocked that consumerism is…

The Psalms form the largest corpus of one of the most unique genres within the biblical canon, namely, the genre of song and poetry. Evangelical Christians tend to neglect that…

He makes an axe head float. He creates ex nihilo. He causes the sun to stand still. He can defeat an entire army on his own and cause his enemies…

As a pastor, I have a deep desire for my congregation to grow as a welcoming and inviting community. Humanly speaking, we feel good to be invited. Whether it is…

They sit there next to you and their feet don’t even hit the floor. You’re thinking, “What, if anything, of this sermon is sinking into my kid’s head?” And with…

Whenever I’m leading the first few meetings of a small group or discussion group, I like to say, “You all can talk or I can talk. I prefer that you…