Wade Poe

There's often a good chance things will go your way. You get that raise. Your friends don't let you down. Dinner doesn't burn. The last episode of your favorite TV show's current season ends on a good note. You invite a friend to a church service and nothing cringy happens "on stage". An event you didn't want to go to gets cancelled. The doctor says it's nothing to worry about. And so on. There's an equally good chance things won't go your way. Your phone didn't charge overnight. Someone you thought you trusted lets you down. You gain weight you thought you'd lost. A politician ruins the economy. Your neighbor backs into your car. A check bounces. No one got your joke. You realize you'll never be able to help someone understand something important to you. Your coupon is expired. And so on. Most of the time, we hope that things will go right, but we reluctantly acknowledge there is no guarantee. We can stack the odds in our favor, bu...

The car salesman said, "Flip the switch to four wheel drive and drive over to the other side...did you feel that four wheel drive kick in?  Doesn't that feel powerful?" Fast forward to a few weeks later when I was speaking to a friend who knows about cars, four wheel drive, and such and he suggests that I have my new-to-me-used Jeep checked out at his friend's shop. Turns out the four wheel drive linkage/mechanism in the new-to-me-used Jeep was gone - didn't exist.  It was now just a regular rear wheel drive vehicle, even though I "felt" the four wheel drive "kick in". The power of suggestion can be strong.  People can say things we want to hear and we will find a way to hear their words and establish some kind of "Yeah, that's right" feeling or belief. Sometimes it's because we want to be liked or thought of as smart or other things like that.  Sometimes it's because we want the thing they say to be true, even though we d...

"If the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn't sound too good to be true, then someone isn't telling you the gospel of Jesus - they're telling you another version of the gospel and it's not actually good news." In him and through faith in him we may approach God  with freedom and confidence.  In Ephesians 3, and a lot of other places, Paul, one of the  people God used to share the good news, tells us that it is through Jesus that we can approach God with freedom and confidence.  Freedom and confidence! One of the messages that I think a lot of believers struggle with is this one.  Can we really  live our lives in relationship with God in freedom and confidence? There  are times that other messages are given with a great deal of confidence that seem to tell us we cannot live our lives in a way where we can always approach God with freedom and confidence. They may not say, "NO, you cannot approach God with freedom and confidence" in a direct way - though I ce...

It's not a sexy title, but it's what it is.  What I've noticed some months into formally separating from "church" as employment and as "just a member" and now visiting a "church" as a visitor. Insider language - it's all over the place.  If you're an established church wanting to make sure you're connecting with people who are already familiar with church and religious concepts, you're probably good to go.   If you're at all wanting to connect with people who don't have any or much connection with those things to start with, you're probably going to have a hard time understanding how much of what you say "up front" and in your songs, illustrations, etc are loaded up with insider language. Yesterday, when visiting a worship service, the preacher was saying so many things - and very quickly at that, it was like I was listening to a podcast on 1.5 or 2x speed - he was saying so many things that required a pe...

An interesting thing about deconstruction and rebuilding is, as expected, to some degree, you figure some things out that exist that you didn't know existed or possibly could be "a thing". One of those for me has been the ability to see more clearly how the good news of God through Jesus has opened humanity to a new way of being IF they can hear and grasp what he's done for us/them. One of the reasons that "church" is often a mixed bag of things for both insiders and outsiders is that in a lot of different ways, because of "how church is done", it recreates the wall God was tearing down. Instead of drawing people to the good news, churches often have made themselves the "go between" for God and those who aren't part of the church and, over time, made "church" into the good news, per se. Instead of telling people about the good news of what God did in Jesus, many "insiders" usually just tell the bad news of the ...

Imagine growing up in a home or community where things didn't go your way.  Or maybe they did, but for whatever reason, they didn't for you and you "turned out different" in some way that made sense to you, but it was and is rejected by many people around you. Call it a learned survival skill, call it a choice, call it whatever - but you are you - and you discover there are people around you in the world like you and you find affinity with them and community with them. For the first time, you are yourself and can kind of relax. And then different points in time come up where you and what you are or what you stand for is challenged and possibly threatened. All that you are and all that your community is comes under what you feel is an attack with the potential to cause harm in some way. You band together with others who are like you - say the same things, feel similar things, verbalize your desire to push back against "the enemy" out there who threaten you an...

Some years ago, an ugly   scene erupted in the family.  My mom and sisters got into a tiff over something that was complicated and prickly.  I learned about it through abrupt phone calls with people telling which side to take.  I had zero idea of what was going on. When I finally figured out the basics, I reached out to a few mutual friends I'd heard knew more and got very polarizing, very different points of view.  The cause of the disagreement is irrelevant for the moment - the main thing is that people were ticked off in a serious way.  I'd never seen mom so angry. I prayed for clarity, made some more calls.  I heard ultimatums and "If this doesn't happen, then I ____" kinds of back and forth.  It was a little unreal, or at least, in my experience with family, maybe it's better to say I'd not experienced internal conflict like that between those particular parties before. I remember talking to my mom one night - mind you, this was about 5-6 day...