The Simpleton Blog

When I was in seminary I had the unique opportunity to travel to Israel. It was a great trip, and one of the highlights of the trip was that we got to stop by the Dead Sea. Now, if you’re not familiar - the Dead Sea is very famous because the water is insanely salty. The salinity level is something like 35%, compared to the ocean - which is like 4% or something like that. Now the salty water has two big effects - first.) it kills everything. Hardly any life can survive in the

Pastor’s Bookshelf - Welcome to my bookshelf! Each month I will discuss a recent book that I’ve finished. This month I’d like to talk about Last Branch Standing By Sarah Isgur Now I'll admit that this recommendation is a bit revealing of my inner nerd - but it's a great read. Sarah Isgur is the host of my favorite podcast "Advisory Opinions" (co-hosted by David French) where they break down Supreme Court cases and arguments twice a week. This is her first book, and it beca

Good morning church, it is so good to be with you all. My name is JJ and I’m the lead pastor over at Center Church. We are your closest sister church in the Zero Collective. As I’m sure you guys are starting to get familiar - Zero Collective is a network of churches sold out on the mission of making sure zero lives are unchanged by Jesus, and for a long time there have been four sister churches. Frontline is the biggest sister - over on plainfield, then Story with Pastor Kyle

Today I want to start by telling you the story of Wangari Maathai. Wangari is from Kenya, and she might be one of the most impressive people I’ve read about in a long time. She was a very influential and important person in Kenya back in the 70’s and 80’s. She had a big pile of degrees from all sorts of international schools - Nairobi, Germany, she got her PhD in 1971. Later she ended up getting elected to Kenya’s National Assembly, was the leader of the National Council of

Today we are continuing our series called “All Hands on Deck” - and we’re going to tell the story of a guy who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in only 52 days, but he did it with 41 different work crews, and all of them had the same mentality: the job gets done, when everyone owns a piece. So let’s dive in. If you want to grab your bible, we are going to be in Nehemiah, chapter 2 and 3, but we’ll start in chapter 2. And while you’re looking that up, I want to give you a bit o

[You can watch the whole message HERE, or just keep reading!] What does it mean to be faithful? I feel like the answer to that is always couched in the negative. Don’t cheat. Don’t wander. Don’t drift. But what does it actually look like in our life? Like, I know what it is not - but what IS it? What does it look like to be proactively faithful? What IS faithfulness? Some of you know this - I was on vacation two weeks ago. My parents have a little place on a lake a couple hou

[You can watch the full message HERE, otherwise keep reading!] I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up - I did not pay a lot of attention to Christian denominations. I grew up methodist, but that didn’t really mean anything to me - that was just the name on the side of the building we always went to. In my town, there were other types of churches - Lutheran and Baptist and whatnot, but I pretty much had no idea the details. It’s funny - the CRC church, Christian Ref

Pastor’s Bookshelf - Welcome to my bookshelf! Each month I will discuss a recent book that I’ve finished. This month I’d like to talk about The Six Types Of Working Genius By Patrick Lencioni I was recently invited to attend a leadership summit in Texas and we were encouraged to read this book and take the assessment in preparation for our discussion. [Sidenote: I do not recommend the assessment - in just reading the book, it's pretty easy to self-select which competencies

Pastor’s Bookshelf - Welcome to my bookshelf! Each month I will discuss a recent book that I’ve finished. This month I’d like to talk about BELOVED By Francis Chan Long ago, I promoted an older book called “Crazy Love” by the same author. Crazy Love was written in the early days of his ministry and sort of launched him onto the national stage. Now, with Beloved, Francis is looking back on his decades of ministry in this extremely compelling work. It’s a beautiful reflecti

You can WATCH the full sermon HERE , otherwise keep reading! Boy, it is good to be back. You know we’ve been going through this series on the ten commandments - and this week we’re talking about sabbath. Now some of you might not know, i haven’t been here very much over the last few weeks. I was in Texas, and then I was in Chicago, then I was over in Waterford for my dad’s retirement and then I had a wedding out in Frankenmuth. Even last week - I was here, not preaching but

[You can WATCH the full message HERE, otherwise keep reading!] How do you get God to say “yes” to your prayers? Is there a negotiation tactic that works? Is there a posture, if you pray on your knees is it more likely he’ll say yes? If I dress nicer - does God lean in to hear me? Is there a certain amount of good deeds I need to do - how do I get God to say “yes”? What’s the formula I need to punch into the vending machine to get my blessing to drop? You know when I was a kid

Why would a slave go back to their abusive master? Why do women stay with husbands who treat them like dirt? Why do we stay in jobs where we are miserable and underappreciated? Why do people sometimes move backwards? When I think about the civil war, and the emancipation proclamation - all those slaves suddenly were free men. In my head they’re standing in a field, maybe they’ve got a hoe or a rake or something, and a man rides by calling out “you’re free!” and in a moment th

Pastor’s Bookshelf - Welcome to my bookshelf! Each month I will discuss a recent book that I’ve finished. This month I’d like to talk about Dominion By Tom Holland I mentioned this book in a sermon recently - and I finished it soon after, and am now ready to recommend this read. I will give this one a PG-13 label - there’s some pretty horrific stuff done throughout history, and Mr. Holland does not skip the rough stuff, including some very rare coarse language. Other than

Are We Living In The End Times? Matthew 24 I wonder how many of you are waiting until we get bombed. I wonder how many of you think this war in the middle east is fulfilling prophecies from the bible. I wonder how many of you think the financial markets are two shades away from collapse. I wonder how many of you are waiting (or maybe even HOPING) for a housing collapse? How many of you are worried about governments or tech companies getting more and more powerful, taking away

Have you ever made the mistake of telling your children about vacation? It’s Mother’s day and so this felt appropriate - mom’s, you ever have littles and you make the mistake of saying the nice thing out loud? Because kids don’t hear a plan. They don’t hear a commitment, right? This is why we parents spell the word ice cream, right? Because you can’t say that word out loud without them losing their minds. I’m talking to my wife, hey - maybe tonight after soccer practice, we c

1 Corinthians 6:9-20 Don’t answer this question out loud. How did you learn about sex? Think back to it - how did you find out about that stuff? Ope, pay attention to the vibe shift that just happened in the room, because we’re going to come back to that. Over the years, I’ve met a lot of people with a lot of different experiences. I have friends whose parents sat them down for an awkward but complete conversation. I have other friends whose parents just pretended that stuff

Pastor’s Bookshelf - Welcome to my bookshelf! Each month I will discuss a recent book that I’ve finished. This month I’d like to talk about Visioneering By Andy Stanley Andy Stanley is the well known pastor of a very successful church down in Georgia. Probably best known as the church that created the kid’s curriculum ORANGE - Andy has a talent for making things relatable and easy to understand. To be honest - I picked up this book because for the first time in my ministr

How do you decide if you’re going to trust something? How do you decide what to believe these days? I remember there was a news story a few years ago where a lawyer used ChatGPT to write his legal brief. The problem is, these were the early days and people didn’t know how it worked. Chat GPT MADE UP citations - like the brief referenced previous court cases that set precedent, but they weren’t real court cases - those cases did not exist! [picture of lawyer new story] And the

What scares you the most about the idea that we are all going to die? I was chatting with some pastors over the last couple of weeks about this series that we’ve been doing. And I told them what was up - we’ve been reading through this book called Ecclesiastes and it’s sort of dark and heavy, but it’s been really meaningful. And one of my pastor buddies, who serves at a church nearby, he said, “of course, you’re not going to do that on Easter, right?” And I told him - oh, no

The Lie of Control - 03.29.2026 Ecclesiastes 9 I want to start this morning with a question - Do you feel like you are in control of your life? I think I go through seasons, personally, where sometimes I feel like I’ve got a really good grip on the steering wheel, and then other seasons when life has got me hog tied in the trunk and I have no idea where we are going. And - have you noticed this? - I find my anxiety, my stress in life is often tied to how in control I feel. Th