Welcome to the John Mark Comer Teaching's Podcast by Practicing the Way.

This teaching was first given at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon

as a part of the Practicing the Way vision series.

We live in a fascinating cultural moment.

We've been thinking about this a lot lately over the last year or so,

in particular the last few months.

I grew up in the church, some of you know that, my dad was a pastor,

so I've been kind of behind the scenes of church leadership

ever since I was a little boy.

I remember sitting in the back of an elders meeting and, you know, drawing as my dad was

there late at night.

And I've been in some kind of church leadership myself ever since I was in high school, so

now what is that

upwards of two decades and I feel like leading a church is harder now than it's

ever been at least in my lifetime I think we're living in this perfect storm of at least four cross currents, and here's kind of a visual representation.

First, we're living in a post-Christian culture, but we all know this in particular in a city like Portland, which we love,

the gravitational pull to the city is just so dang strong.

The poll to just, man, why go to church?

Let's just like go out for beers and have fun and hang out the

poll to slide on what Jesus and the writers in the New Testament have to say about

sexuality and marriage the pull to just give in to rampant consumerism and buy jacket number 13 that you don't need

and not even ask where it was made or whatever. Like that pull is just so easy to get sucked in.

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