Rhonda: from darkness to light

Rhonda Jean Powell from Ecclesia Hollywood on Vimeo.

Failing to fail.

Fear turns more people into failures than failing does. A friend of mine knows a thing or two about failing—physically, professionally, personally. Joey Gloor is a schoolteacher and personal trainer with arms bigger than my Bible commentaries and he’s been featured on all kinds of shows including MTV’s I Used To Be Fat. Joey’s recently started to VLOG a little (which sounds like a Russian dance, but evidently it’s not). In one installment, he talks about a concern that a new generation is growing up with an inflated sense of possibility...

Stealing my phone only makes my daughter...

This is my phone. There’s a story here. I always buy two things used: cars and computers (and I include anything that acts like a computer). However, last year, I broke policy and purchased new iPhone 4‘s for Katie and me when our contract was set to renew. At the same time, Tessa was starting to earn an allowance and she really wanted an iPod. We told her that if she saved $30, she could buy Mom’s old phone (phone deactivated, of course). She hit her goal and even had enough left over to buy a sweet pink zebra case to protect it. Then, tragedy...

5 WAYS I’M VULNERABLE

The last quality we explored in the Core Values teaching series was VULNERABILITY. Everywhere I looked, the word was defined in the negative: you’re sticking your neck out, defenseless, asking for trouble or rejection. But there’s another, beautiful version of vulnerability: Only through the SACRIFICE of Jesus are we brought into the new COVENANT with God and experience healthy, honest VULNERABILITY: Intimacy that can completely trust without hiding anything. These are the 3 dimensions of God’s love. As God’s people, we get to love as He loves. His...

5 ways I COVENANT.

We’re two weeks through our teaching series on the CORE VALUES of Ecclesia Hollywood. Last week, I described how we really have one core value (LOVE), but we need further explanation to know what we mean by “love”, so we talk about 1-in-3 (how very trinitarian of us). Jesus loved through SACRIFICE, COVENANT and VULNERABILITY. I’m a human: a promise-breaker. But God’s made a covenant with me and secured my end of the covenant in Jesus. His love for me doesn’t stop. As His child, I have the chance to join Him in this uninterrupted love...

Best Wedding Reception Drummer Ever.

He did it his way.

7 ways I SACRIFICE

This last Sunday, we started a 3-week teaching series on the 3 core values of Ecclesia: Sacrifice Covenant Vulnerability Where did we get these? Essentially, Ecclesia only has ONE core value: LOVE. In everything we do, we strive to love. But ask 23 people what “love” means and you get 23 definitions. We follow Jesus. So we want to learn to love like He loves. And to Jesus, love is all-in SACRIFICE, in no-matter-what COVENANT, producing healthy, life-changing VULNERABILITY. To make “values” helpful on any level, we need to follow the example of Scripture and...

Far & Away (or, What’s Good a...

It was 1992. I was 16. I had a girlfriend and a car. The movie that boyfriends with cars took girlfriends to in 1992 was Far and Away. I’m not defending the choice, I’m just stating the facts. If you’ve seen the film (and all of you have) you might remember the big moment at the end when Joseph Donnelly (Tom Cruise) died. At that moment, I was angry and shocked. How could he be dead?!! I mean, I’m glad that it took a gunfight, a severe head wound and a horse rolling over him to do it; but the fact remained that the hero I’d been following for...