David Sunde's Blog

Faith needs a laboratory, like love needs verbs and hope needs an address!

We live in a world God created but never intended. Brokenness—injustice, tragedy, disease, death—has become our desensitizing normal. What God once called good, we've calloused our hearts to survive.

Easter interrupts this reality with an invitation to be made new. The resurrection isn't a static holiday to commemorate. It's a promise for all people, at all times, to be made new, begin again, continually. Change is possible...

I LOVE the children's message. I love the kids running forward, getting high fives, raising their hands before a question is asked, and of course, the unscripted utterances of wanting to give the right answer. It's the perfect spiritual sorbet to cleanse a parishioner's palette before settling into sacramental worship.

Deacon Eric asked the kids this week, "Have you ever had to say you're sorry?" Hands shot up. "What kinds of things have you had to apologize for?" Eager anecdotes faded into strea...

“The world is louder than it is accurate, and the truest things are often the most quiet.”

Brad Montague wrote that in his Manifesto for Stubborn Optimists, and I can't stop thinking about it. Because right now, injustice screams. Fear accuses. The desperate stampede shouts a single message: Save yourself! But underneath all that noise, there's this whisper that reorients Christian Hope…the world we know as normal is not the one God intended.

Mea culpa is a familiar refrain confessing, “my fault...

The world is louder than it is accurate, and the truest things are often the most quiet.

Brad Montague wrote that in his Manifesto for Stubborn Optimists, and I can't stop thinking about it. Because right now, injustice screams. Fear accuses. The desperate stampede shouts a single message: save yourself. But underneath all that noise, there's this whisper—the world we know as normal is not the one God intended.

We know mea culpa—my fault, my confession. But what about felix culpa? Happy fault. For...

We know that moment when someone became "Mom" or "Dad" to us. Not when we mastered swaddling or figured out sleep schedules—but something deeper. A protective instinct we didn't know existed suddenly emerged. Identity shifted before competence ever caught up.

If you ask your child, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" try following up with, "Then what?" Because here's the truth: identity isn't a destination. It's not about arriving at a job title and stopping. It's about becoming.

Remember I...

In Almost Famous, rock journalist Lester Bangs snuck a profound, easily missed confession to his young protégé: "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Parenting inevitably reveals how the older we get, the less cool we become (#facts). But, what could be more unnerving - like realizing a mirror works even when our eyes are closed – is that kids have a front-row seat to our harried moments of long days and late nights of our flawed ...

One of the best to kill the vibe of a perfectly good small group is a curriculum. The alternative - discussing Sunday sermons - doesn’t offer a better growth trajectory. We’ve all been there - discussion narrows, relationships find a polite lane, and learning becomes primarily cognitive.

So, what if the “content” was your family rehearsing what you believe is true about God? What if you could move the needle of your small group from discussion to demonstration? From information to equipping? Wha...

Spend five minutes with a child asking a few questions and you can quickly learn what their family values, expectations, what’s allowed, and what’s frowned upon. Why is that?

Because a mirror works even when our eyes are closed.

Without having to say a word and without intending to, human nature has a way of expressing preferences, fears, political leanings, approval, annoyances, pleasure, and doubts without having to say a word. It’s in our reactions, a heavy sigh, how we spend, and what’s permis...

Arriving before daybreak to immerse myself in the Austin phenomenon that is SXSW, I joined a rising tide of die-hard live music fans. A local radio station had set up in an oversized living-room-for-a-lobby at the Four Seasons. Sitting in the round, they live-broadcast their morning show all week—offering the perfect indie-music sampler platter. Two songs per artist, stripped-down sets with minimal DJ introductions—an ideal way to digest the week's overwhelming festivities.

These emerging artists...

While the Church wrestles with outward cultural relevance, it's also navigating an inward challenge of metrics. Results and fruit, though both valuable, serve distinct purposes. The primary difference is:

God doesn't call His people primarily to results—He invites us to bear fruit.

Results manifest in statistics—attendance, sign-ups, volunteers, baptisms, small group involvement. Each number represents a life , yet the fruit of person’s life is best measured in developmental relationships; those c...