Sterling Griggs

Steve reached into the kitchen cabinet for a real plate, not one of the cheap paper ones that his family normally used. With a large family, paper plates were the typical go-to for any occasion, but sometimes you need the real thing to get the job done, such as heating up leftovers in the microwave. As he eyed the stack of mid-sized plates, he paused, not reaching for the one on top. Instead, reaching down to the fourth plate, he lifted it and gently slid the fifth one in line out of its position, careful to not let the stack slam back down when he was done. With his conquest in hand he could now commence with satisfying his hunger with leftover meatloaf from last night’s dinner. Why grab a plate from the middle of the stack and not the one on top, you may ask? The answer lies in the story of the underdog. Steve considers himself to be a champion of the underdog, that one guy who will cast his bet on the horse with the longest odds or the team that Vegas won’t touch. Okay, so why ...

“ All the tax collectors and sinners were approaching to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and scribes were complaining, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them !’” (Luke 15:1-2) In those two brief verses, the entire ministry of Jesus can be summed up as well as the legacy of the church that has been tasked to follow after Him. While He was on earth, Jesus loved those who were far from God while the religious leaders of His day hated Him for it. Unfortunately, that pattern still holds true today. Years ago, someone coined the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) and from that spawned countless bracelets, t-shirts, and Wednesday messages from youth pastors. The idea was that if it was good enough for Jesus, then it should be good enough for us, too. And what exactly was good enough for Jesus? Luke 15:1 gives us the answer – He loved those who were far from God. Today’s Christians – myself included – have too often chosen to take this idea of loving those who are far from ...

When I was a kid the world around me was unique and often intimidating. The mall where my parent's shopped was this huge complex of endless stores and easy places for kids like me to get lost. Fast food restaurants were exotic stops reserved for special occasions where I could peek over the counter as the workers whipped up a milkshake for me while steaming hot fries awaited me beside a fresh made burger. Even my backyard appeared as big as a football field on which I could wear my little self out everyday running and playing with my brothers and my friends. As easy as it is to romanticize about the "good old days," it's also easy to realize that those places and events weren't so exquisite as I once believed. I can now walk from one end of the mall to the other in a matter of minutes and there are virtually no stores in which I would choose to venture, much less get lost in. Those milkshakes, fries, and burgers are certainly not a treat anymore and the older I...

This past Saturday night my new neighborhood - Wrightsville Green, aka The Hood - celebrated its annual 4th of July gathering. Before we even moved in, several of our neighbors were quick to tell us how fun and amazing this night was. Our home owner's association sent us emails reminding us of the festivities and we were asked to sign up to bring food at the community mailbox. Seeing this as an opportune chance to get to know pretty much everyone in all 50+ homes, we agreed to bring cantaloupe (because you can't have a party without melon) and a cucumber/tomato/onion salad (because if they didn't eat it, I would). The days leading up to the shindig were filled with stories of past 4th of July celebrations and how this year's was going to be the best ever. Finally the big day had arrived. The party officially started at 4:00 but we planned to be fashionably late because it's really awkward when you don't really know many people and you are the first ones to ...

There has been a lot of discussion over the past few years about why younger people are not returning once they graduate high school and why younger adults are checking out of church as well. A whole host of reasons have been given to explain this phenomenon: A lack of relevancy in today's church, this younger generation expressing a much greater need for community than church can offer to them, and a shift in theological perspectives. It is likely that all of these reasons, and many more like them, are partially responsible for the church exodus from many in the younger generation. What is not apparent is whether there is one dominant reason that people just aren't all that crazy about church today. Let me be up front - I don't have a clue as to what that primary reason could be, or even if there is one. All I know if what I hear from those who find themselves less than enthused about going to church today. Recently I had a conversation with a man who had not been to ...

When I was a kid growing up, I used to hear adults complain all the time about how hard it was to keep their bodies in shape as they aged. Everyone once in awhile, one of them would look at me and my friends and say something like, "You kids have it made. While you keep growing up, all I seem to be able to do is grow out. It looks like I've got a spare tire around my waist!"  As cheesy as this statement is, it holds a lot of truth for today's churches. Ask any pastor or church leader if expanding the kingdom of God is priority, and he or she will unequivocally say, "Yes!" Ask those same leaders what strategy they have in place to make that happen, and the answers you get probably won't be so emphatic or unified. How do we expand the kingdom of God while we are here on earth? I realize that this is a theologically loaded question, so let me narrow the scope a bit. What can churches do today that will effectively increase their impact and influence fo...

Beaver Bottom Church had a problem. Actually, they had lots of problems but this one stood out more than any of the others. It seems that the new pastor, Rev. Donald Doorite, was wanting to nix the canine evangelism program that had been run out of their fellowship hall for the past 17 years. The distinguished Mr. Harold Winston Higgenbotham, lifelong member and self-proclaimed top tither at Beaver Bottom Church, started and initially funded the canine evangelism program after his daughter came home from a Disney movie convinced that dogs could - and should - go to heaven. Because Mr. Higgenbotham was such a faithful giver and dominant voice in the church, no one really opposed the idea. Besides, maybe dogs do go to heaven, they reasoned. Now almost two decades later, Mr. Higgenbotham and his immediate family was long gone, having left Beaver Bottom Church in a huff after a disagreement over the color of the new carpet in the sanctuary. Yet the canine evangelism program was still ...

Growing up in a Christian home, church on Sundays was not just something that we did. It was something that served to define who we were. I have fond memories of attending Sunday school classes where I learned about Moses crossing the Red Sea, Daniel and the lion's den, and Jesus healing sick people all from the magic of the flannel graph board. The pain of sitting beside my grandfather on those impossibly hard wooden pews was dulled by hearing his rich baritone voice singing those beautiful old hymns. Those were simple, good times, but they served to give me a spiritual foundation that I have never forgotten. As I grew older and eventually left home, going to church shifted from something I had to do as a child under my parents' authority to something I could choose to do. As a young man who was entering the ministry, continuing to attend church was a no-brainer for me - why would I NOT want to go? Yet at the same time, I began to notice traits within me bubbling to the sur...

My wife and I were sitting on the porch the other day sipping coffee together and reminiscing about how easy life was when we were little kids. We tend to do that from time to time when our schedules get out of whack and it feels as if the calendar is our nemesis rather than sheets of paper held by magnets to our refrigerator. Memories have the ability to allow you to escape like that. On this particular morning we were talking about our grandparents on our mothers' sides, all of whom have already passed on from this world. I brought up the old show Hee Haw  that I watched on so many Saturday evenings in my grandparents living room when my wife lit up and told me about the many times that she too had lounged in her pajamas in her grandmother's living room in Topeka, KS, and watched Roy Clark and Buck Owens lead a cheesy cast of comedic characters across the old tube television set with the wood grained sides.  My wife never had the pleasure of knowing her grandfather as a chil...

I took my middle and high school students to camp this past week and we had a great time with all the stuff camp brings - lack of sleep, filthy living conditions, every middle schooler wanting to challenge my manhood, stuff like that. But it was so good to have our students together for a week away from most distractions (we let them have their phones one hour every night, the rest of the time they are in the "Box of Woe") and to focus them more on Jesus and what He wants for their lives. Now when you gather over 1,000 students in one place from churches all over the map, you know you are going to get a mixed bag of personalities and backgrounds in that place. Where I live, church is usually an afterthought, so many of my students don't have a church background and really don't understand church culture, which is perfectly fine with me. It's refreshing to have a clean slate with so many of them when it comes to questions of faith and how to live it out. I don'...

"Steven" had another bad day. That's what the school administrator told me as I sat in a comfy chair across from her desk. This young man, barely halfway through his elementary education, would be spending the next couple of days at home. Again. And no, she didn't break confidentiality by telling me his name - I actually guessed. I was there to discuss with her ideas about using high school students after school to tutor and mentor elementary students and, before I rose to leave, I told her that if there was an immediate need that I could help with, please let me know. That was when she mentioned a student - whom I guessed to be "Steven" - who was really struggling and was facing yet another suspension from school. She called him a "throw away" kid, not because she didn't see his value (she did and she showed him much love), but rather because the rest of the world around him didn't seem to recognize it.  Hearing this story literally b...

Lately I've been reading a book entitled Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those Who Help and How to Reverse it . While this book certainly isn't new on the scene, it is for me, and it comes a pretty pivotal point in my life and my way of thinking. Giving to the poor, helping those in need, offering emergency assistance - all of these things are essential and have been amply demonstrated to us by the example of Jesus Himself. Yet all to often churches and other religious groups have turned missions into nothing more than "religious tourism", pouring money into communities where there is no real outlet for sustainable change. In fact, if we were truly honest with ourselves, we often see missions as more for us than it is for those we are going to help. All of that aside, the message of missions got me to thinking about what the world truly needs to see and hear from those who are followers of Jesus. There are several options vying for that top category...

The other weekend my wife and I enjoyed some much needed beach time with our toes in the sand watching the waves crash onto the shore. As we lazily sat in our chairs soaking up the sun and breathing in the salty air, we noticed a girl approaching that we recognized, which is not all that uncommon since we do live beside the beach. She stopped to say hello and we casually asked her how things were going with her. To our surprise, she told us. Everything. I mean, she let us know where she had been so far this summer, who she hung out with, how her parents were doing, etc. She didn't give the typical answers, " Things are good...I'm fine...been busy... " No, she actually answered the question that we asked her. Which was surprising, because normally when we ask people how they are doing we don't really find out how they are doing because they typically don't tell us how they are doing, because that's not really what we want to hear, right? Instead, we exp...

This weekend was a community — a real, true community — coming together in celebration of life. In celebration of music, of friendship, of happiness, of dance — of spirit, peace, and love. With a deep respect for all that came before, a profound acceptance for what’s happening now, and a shared optimism that everything will be okay. When you read that above paragraph, did you think you were perhaps reading about a weekend worship retreat or an incredible youth camp experience from a spiritually moved teenager? If you did, then you are wrong. Dead wrong. That paragraph is actually an excerpt of a blog post written by a Grateful Dead fan and it captures her experience at the Dead's farewell concert series in Chicago July 3-6. Let me go ahead and say that while I appreciate the Grateful Dead's music, I would hardly consider myself much of a fan, let alone a celebrated Deadhead. But reading the entire post by this fan got me thinking: How come Christians aren't this e...

What do you get when you put grace and truth in a blender? A big, beautiful mess! A whole lot of Christians operate as if grace and truth are interchangeable concepts, kind of like jeans in the winter and shorts in the summer. You can wear shorts in the snow but you would freeze, just as you would sweat to death wearing jeans in July. There were moments where grace rules the day while at other times truth is all that matters. Mix them together? Like oil and water, that simply can't be sustained, at least not for long. As a result of this view, many strive to keep grace and truth separate but equal in their way of thinking. When they need to stake their claim in truth, that is no problem. If you don't agree with what they believe to be true then there is really no room for discussion - you would simply have to live with being wrong and would get little to no sympathy from them. Yet there are also those moments where grace is needed to flood a dry and parched land. In those ...

The conversation was going well with my pastor friend until the topic shifted to another church in his area. Apparently, talking about THAT church hit a nerve. Before I knew it, I was hearing an in depth analysis about THAT church and its pastor and how they are stealing people from all the other churches in the community. Stealing? Well maybe not "stealing" he admitted, but courting them with flashy worship and big events and the "cool factor" that other churches like his own couldn't pull off. And did you know, he asked, that they don't even preach the Bible there? In fact, in their worship services they play "secular" music. The substance in THAT church is about an inch deep and a mile wide, he told me. I wasn't sure how to respond to such a scathing critique about this sister church. Probing a little deeper I found that my friend had never actually been in that church to observe these heretical phenomena nor did he personally know the pa...

There has been a firestorm over the recent posting of a video in which Victoria Osteen literally opens the Pandora's box that all of her and her husband's critics have been anxiously waiting for. Don't get me wrong - what she said from the stage was nauseating and thoroughly unbiblical, yet the glee expressed from the Osteen's opponents was no less horrific. As a conservative evangelical Christian, I get it. Joel Osteen and his wife have been less than forward with the truth of the gospel and have chosen instead to proclaim the merits of living a life where all God wants for you to be is happy. Their ministry is watched and heard by millions of people who in turn simply adore Joel and his wife, hanging on every word that they say. They make people feel important and special and valued by God. And indeed people are. But when any man or woman who claims to be God's mouthpiece speaks for God words that are not found in His word, then Houston, we've ...

In the spring of 1989 I plunged head first into the Greek system at Wake Forest University by joining a fraternity. True to what you may have been led to believe on TV or in books, many fraternities indeed ARE as crazy as you think, and my fraternity was on that list. Not all the fun that we had was destructive and evil - I have some really great memories and still keep up with some pretty awesome guys - but for the most part debauchery was the primary goal. Now as a kid raised in a conservative Southern Baptist church, hedonism and Sunday school don't mix together too well. I knew all too well the lessons from the Bible and the truth that lay behind them, yet they were not enough to keep me from wanting to run to the dark side for a time and enjoy all of it's guilty pleasures. Was I properly taught the Scriptures? If I were truly saved, would I have gone down this wayward path? What went wrong? You see, the Bible teaching that I received growing up was first rate and I wo...

--> You know this person I am about to write about. In fact, you may actually be this person and are unaware that you are. Who am I talking about? The person who sucks the life right out of you, the one who demands more time than you can give and lets you know if you have not catered to his or her needs enough, that’s who. Now before you dismiss this as crass and insensitive, reserve your judgment for a few moments. I don’t believe that there is a church (or civic organization or school PTA or recreation sports league or community group for that matter) that has been spared from at least one individual who demanded that she get most of the attention. She dominates the conversations. He insists that you listen to his views before anyone else. She dismisses what you have to say as trivial and out of touch. He does not think you are paying enough attention to his child as a leader/mentor/coach/teacher. She always has an opinion and is not afraid to share it. Even if you w...