I recently reached the ten-year mark as the lead pastor of Calvary Monterey. In one sense, that is not a great deal of time, but it was a wild decade.

The authors of the New Testament, or the entire Bible for that matter, were not oblivious to the hard conditions found amongst humanity. They were conscious of the turmoil and pain many people groups have been forced to toil under. As the gospel of Jesus Christ spread, so did the church’s understanding that women, children, and the working class have often been abused in various systems, cultures, religions, nations, time periods, etc.

Growing up, my family always had a newspaper subscription, so reading the news always felt like a grown-up thing to do. But my entrance into adulthood coincided with the proliferation of internet news outlets, followed by social networks which quickly became useful for disseminating headlines and editorials. And, because this is what humans do, all I ever did was add to my reading list. I never subtracted. Finally, a breaking point came, and I realized I could never keep up.

The thing about this man is that rather than exclusively concentrate on building his networks and connections, he builds his skills. As the years pass by, he is no one-hit-wonder, no temporary YouTube sensation. Instead, his skills speak for themselves. Dude has game. He has a craft, a job, an enterprise, and his ability to perform it is strong.