Month: March 2022

What Bible verse did Buzz Aldrin take to outer space? What was the first meal eaten on the moon? What do space travel and the Christian life have in common? In this fascinating conversation, Steve Carter interviews Levi Lusko, the founder and lead pastor of Fresh Life Church, located in Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, and Utah and everywhere online, about his new book, The Last Supper on the Moon, which plays off NASA’s 1969 lunar voyage to draw powerful principles about what it means to follow Jesus.

Sometimes we need to hear age-old truths in a new way, which is arguably Levi’s forte. Whether curating a user-friendly digital livestream, or requiring all church employees to read a Michelin-rated restaurateur’s manual on hospitality, Fresh Life Church is leading the way in engaging our cultural moment. At the core of his sermon prep and writing is a practice Levi calls “collect and connect,” which is a relentless quest to learn, catalog stories and ideas, then use them as illustrations. He also shares how suffering has shaped him as a pastor, and how something as simple as taking a deep breath can be instrumental in cultivating character.

For Albert Tate, a sermon isn’t about words streaming from your mouth, but truths running through your life. He explains how the best sermons start in the head, move to the heart, then lodge in your gut一until the Spirit grips you with conviction, you aren’t actually preaching yet. A cursory glance at Tate’s dynamic teaching reveals not only a willingness to say hard things, but to preach them to himself first.

Steve Carter interviews Tate about his forthcoming book, How We Love Matters: A Call To Relentless Racial Reconciliation. With his trademark blend of creativity and conviction, Tate tackles a culturally contentious issue, building off his upbringing in Mississippi and decades of church ministry in Southern California. He views the Table as utterly transformative一a place where, like Jesus, we sit with people drastically different than ourselves. When we learn to listen well, we learn to love well.