From the Home Place

March 20, 2026

You might be tempted to put on your summer shorts and soak up some rays today with the high temperature reaching near 80 and above that mark tomorrow. However, with a warmer than normal March, April looks 20-30 degrees cooler. Please be praying for plenty of April showers.

Today is the birthday of our eldest daughter. I remember when she weighed in at less that 7 pounds. It wasn’t too long before she would be sitting atop of an old sorrel mare we had. When my little helper was short of three feet, she learned to ride on Kitty, the mare that stood a tad over sixteen hands tall and weighed right at 1,300 pounds. Those two were quite a pair for several years. Mandi and Kitty were by far the best help I ever had when we lived on the ranch! So today, I begin with a “Happy Birthday Bud!”

I have to admit it was plumb fun to ride into a branding with those two traveling beside me. Everyone marveled at how tiny that little girl looked on top of that great big horse. Several times folks asked why I didn’t “get that little girl a smaller horse?” The way I looked at it was that I knew that old mare would do her best to take care of that little girl, so in my mind she was safer than on the back of some half-wit pony. I also figured that this girl was going to be riding for a lot of years, so she had just as well learn how to ride on a good, dependable horse, not some temporary pony.

You see my friends, that is much the way it is when learning to walk with Jesus. Some folks want to take it easy, to be safe. Well for my two cents, when a person starts walking with Jesus looking for a safe life, that person will most likely spend the rest of their life wanting Jesus to keep them safe.

In my mind, the biggest problem we have in the American church is that most folks want their Christian experience to be comfortable and safe. Read your Bible – the heroes of old didn’t have safe faith. Even through the early years of America, those folks lived by a dangerous faith.

Today, I will meet with a group of people who talk a lot about the necessity of planting churches. Yet 99% of them have never planted a church, and very few of those pastors have ever raised up a church planter. As pastors, we tend to want to keep folks safe inside of our church. Yet, somewhere at some time in the past, someone risked everything they had and everything they were to start that church. You see my friends, great churches are built upon risk, not upon safety.

I hope your church proves me wrong, but allow me to ask, “When was the last time your church risked greatly to advance the kingdom of God?” Most churches tend to have programs that are manageable. We allow some other congregation to try the “new” study that we are now hoping to duplicate within our congregation. We buy the books, we establish the groups and we conduct proven studies so that we can play it safe as we hope for vast numbers of people to join our church.

When was the last time that you heard of a local church risking greatly to advance the kingdom of God? By risking greatly, I think of investing most of the church’s bank account to reach folks who don’t know Jesus yet. To send out a mass of people who are not perfectly prepared but are willing to be dependent upon the Holy Spirit for protection, provision and production. Or when was the last time your pastor stood in the pulpit and said something like, “As a church we believe so heavily in the cause of planting churches that we are giving most of our money and the very best of our people to go plant new congregations all around our state.”

Well, lest I get too carried away, perhaps it’s best to just realize that most Christians are still riding their pony to church every Sunday. It appears that there are few who are willing to learn how to ride a big horse with a big faith that isn’t always safe! Oh, but praise God for the few that are willing to show the courage that the great theologian John Wayne spoke of when he said, “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway!” Remember God called Joshua to be “strong and courageous,” not safe.

Saddling up with you, Neal