On September 20 the church I serve, Sunridge Community Church, celebrated its 20th anniversary. It has been my privilege to be involved in God's work through this church for almost 14 of those years. Some great volunteers at Sunridge put together a video for our celebration that tells our story. It's 18 minutes long, but that breaks down to less than one minute per year. I hope you have time to see and hear the whole story!

At Sunridge Community Church, where I pastor, we often print invitations for our members to give to friends. But we've never made one that I like better than the iPhone-like card we're using now to advertise our upcoming marriage series called Love Song. It is the exact same height and width as an iPhone, and it even has cool rounded corners. On the back is an invitation to visit a website, gotkids.tv, to help shape the content of the parenting series we're doing in November.

The title of each marriage message is a popular song. We're starting on September 27 with You Can't Always Get What You Want, a message about why marriage isn't what we thought it would be. If you live in the Temecula Valley, I hope you'll join us this fall as we learn a lot of biblical truth on practical topics.

By the way, the invitation was created by Jamison Advertising in Chula Vista and printed by Robinson Printing in Temecula. Both companies have partnered with Sunridge on several projects.

It was when the San Diego Wild Animal Park first opened its new lion exhibit, which puts nothing between visitors and the animals except a low fence and a deep ravine.  If you're a photographer, this is a not-to-miss photo op.  

Click here to see other animals pics I have taken, many at the WAP.

Many pastors teach that Christians should tithe, but if you were at Sunridge this past Sunday, you know I'm not one of them.  It's not because I think it's unbiblical, but because I think it's outdated.  When Jesus died on the cross, we died to the Law—all of it, including tithing.  God replaced the Law with the Spirit (Romans 7-8), and now we give as we are led by the Spirit (2 Corinthians 8-9).

This clip from the sermon was my most unscripted 60 seconds, so my words are not as precise as I would like.  (For instance, the word "risk" implies that God didn't really know if grace would work better than law; of course He did.)  But I hope you can see why grace giving matters to me.  I'm not anti-tithing; I just don't want to revert to the Law in the era of the Spirit.

What do you think?  Is tithing for today?  And in what sense are Christians under the Law?

To view the entire message, click here.

For some reason, this is the only Pink Panther scene I can remember.  I have repeated it so many times to my kids that they know all the lines, even though they have never seen the movie.  So boys, here it is—the original.