Kidnapped, enslaved, and forgotten—until God spoke in a dream. The story of Patrick isn’t just history; it’s an invitation. What happens when we say yes to God, even when it leads us back to the places we’d rather avoid?
Back in 2015, a congregant shared a dream he had about our church. In that dream he met a little Latino girl and her family, all of whom had been oppressed. Eventually in the dream, there was a white, dazzling tree and flying out of it was a pure white dove that got larger as…
“If you have a problem with your church, don’t split it. Just go somewhere else. The church has enough division in it already,” my college professor once taught. It’s unfortunate, but if you’re in leadership, you are bound to eventually butt heads with another leader—even in the church. This naturally comes with the territory of…
As the early Jewish Church began to reach non-Jewish people and they all took on the title, “Christians,” the Jewish Church had a big question to ask: “What of the 600+ Jewish laws did the non-Jewish Christians need to follow?” Such rules had long been identifying markers of the people of God, so it was…
Ever since the dawn of its existence, the church has been busy arguing about what’s essential to the Christian faith and what isn’t. This wasn’t too hard to figure out when the church was entirely Jewish, because they all knew what it meant to be a good Jew. From a Jewish perspective they just had…
“There’s been an accident outside,” Dad yelled, as he flashed the basement lights to get me and my friend’s attention. The two of us put our instruments down and bolted out the door to find a woman lying on the ground across the street, her legs severed at the kneecap. It seemed impossible to make…
We often like to blame stunted church growth on variables that are “out there.” But if we’re honest with ourselves, we’d likely realize that we are often our own problem. So many churches stall out because of drama and gossip. Indeed, I’ve seen this happen several times in my short pastoral career. Such drama is…
Anyone who has gotten involved in supernatural ministry has at some point prayed a prayer that goes something like, “God, would you heal this person for your glory so that many would hear their testimony and be saved?” This isn’t a bad prayer as people do sometimes come to salvation through the witnessing of such…
In the post-apocalyptic movie, The Book of Eli, the villain has one main mission: To find a copy of the Bible. Though all Bibles were supposedly destroyed after the nuclear war, he continues to send his men out in attempts to find one lying under the rubble of the old world. This confuses his goons,…
The first three blind people that Heidi Baker saw healed through her ministry were all named, “Aida.” Even more intriguing to Heidi was that she was known by the people of Mozambique as “Aida,” since Aida is the Portuguese version of Heidi. Heidi knew this couldn’t be coincidence, so she asked God for the meaning…
Jamin Bradley 