The cushy island known as American Christianity can be a dangerous place.

Filled with pretentious trendiness, superficial authenticity, and plastic spirituality.

It’s the worst kind of prison because it’s one you never want to leave.

The artificial trees never need watering.

You’re always well fed.

And every one around you looks and acts like you.

Have we traded something real for something sanitized?

Perhaps its time for Stepford Christians to rage against the machine.

What if we escaped the island and swam to the shores of authentic Christianity?

What if we became refugees from the comfortable life…

and followers of the dangerous footprints that Jesus left behind?

Discovering we’re all diverse jewels within the treasure chest of God’s love.

Remembering the grace of God is not just a gift we are given, but one that we share.

Returning to the life less ordinary we find in Jesus.

What if we showed this broken world that Christ came to save jacked-up people like us?

Not hide our brokenness behind our well-crafted masks.

What if we left behind our religious creation and simply swam to Jesus?

The Founder and Perfecter of our faith.

Last year, I had the opportunity to pray at center ice of a local pro hockey game in front of 4500 people in my hometown.

It was a sweet moment.

As I was waiting by the penalty box listening to the National Anthem, I thought, “Why me?”

With the chill of the ice beneath my feet and the goosebumps on my arms, I was dumbfounded how I got to this point.

How did I go from sitting on the sidelines of life watching others live their dreams to playing in the game and living mine?

Why me?

I’m just an ordinary guy.

Just five years ago I was content to have a good job, take care of my family, go to church, try to be a decent person, and live a comfortable life.

Until God disturbed me.

He filled me with a passion to help people live free.

And I know the only path to true freedom is the gospel.

The gospel was the seed that birthed Project Church.

And somehow, someway God called me to be a part of this.

Why me?

There are certainly better people God could have chosen.

Better pedigree.

Better leaders.

Better communicators.

Better looking.

You name it.

Some people feel the need to point out how unimpressive I am.

Too much this, not enough that.

So and so is better.

I already know.

I’m just a dude.

But I’m a dude who really loves Jesus.

I’m a dude who really wants you to know the Jesus that I know.

To taste the grace that I’ve tasted.

To experience the freedom that I’m experiencing.

To find your life in the Story of God.

Why me?

Perhaps my life will be proof that there is a God.

Because if he can use me, he can use anybody.

That includes you!

So here’s to The Ordinaries like me.

Like Peter and John before us, may anything extraordinary we do be because we had been with Jesus.

May he always be the extra in our ordinary.

May we always remember that.

Churches should be like bars and keep an endless supply of grace on tap.

To a parched world, this life often feels like you’ve been working atop a roof on a scorching, hot day.

Churches can either offer an ice cold drink of grace…

Some warm, sour milk of religion…

Or nothing at all.

Too many offer the latter options.

We need more who offer the first.

Churches are to be paragons of grace.

What is the church but a people united by the gospel of grace found in Jesus?

On the cross, the keg of God’s grace was tapped and is available to all.

Forever overflowing into the empty steins of our lives and churches for a reason:

To receive it and share with others.

People can find better products and services elsewhere.

But no one and nothing should outgrace us!

As I enter my final month as pastor of the church I founded, I can already see the stitching of my pastor patch unraveling.

It’s more difficult than I realized.

I didn’t get the patch because I was a professional Christian. Far from it. But over time, that patch became a part of me. It gave me purpose. It gave me access. It gave me a platform. It gave me permission. It gave me trust. And regrettably, it gave me an identity.

As I journey through the process of unstitching the pastor patch, I’m unearthing a piercing neglect in my soul. The very truth I preached my heart out for people to know is the very truth I had forgotten: God loves me, just as I am.

Somewhere along the way, I equated that patch with God’s affirmation and love. I was like a preschooler who worked hard to color a picture for my Father to hang on his fridge in pride. Only my artwork was my ministry. And over the last few months I’ve wondered, if I stop coloring, will my Father have anything to be proud of?

But God, my strong and loving Father, is reminding me what I already know. That my value and worth isn’t based on my performance, projects, or patch, it’s based on the striking and soul-stirring certainty that I am His. Period.

To believe otherwise is to believe a fairy tale.