Jesus, Pilate, Job, and You
A collection of stories. Redemption – Bob and Jen from The River Church on Vimeo.
View PostWho Do You Think You Are?
A conversation between Jesus and Pilate.
View PostQuote from Uncovered
Interested? Check out the rest of the book: Uncovered, by Rod Tucker
View PostGenerous Life Radio Interview
Here is a radio interview I did with some great guys: Mike Stickler and Tom Clegg. Generous Life Radio
View PostMeant to Shine
We are called to have significant impact in God’s Kingdom.
View PostUncovered Interview on KRVR Radio
Click here to listen to my latest interview with KRVR Radio.
View PostTwo
A friend of mine told me an old cliche today that gave me an epiphany. He said “It takes two to tango.” And it’s true. It does. How many times have you been in some kind of a conflict with another person and thought: “I’m the healthy one. I just wish they would get healthy!”? […]
View PostMirror Room
A retired football coach, Frosty Westering, wrote a book years ago that everyone needs to read. Unfortunately, it is a collector’s item, and you need to have around $40 to get a copy. In the book he talks about the difference between the Mirror Room and the Window Room. Essentially, when you are in the […]
View PostChurch Isn’t Safe
Church Isn’t Safe
View PostLearn To Fly
Have you ever watched a bird fly? I mean really watched? Birds are made to fly. That is what makes watching them fly so amazing. They are doing what they were created to do. Profound. Exhilarating. Wow. But did you know birds have to learn to fly? I know you knew this fact. But have […]
View PostThe End – Catching a Glimpse
We as the church, are the movie trailer for the Kingdom of God
View PostJohny Hendricks
Have you ever heard the name Johnny Hendricks? He is a Mixed Martial Artist. He is a good one, and recently he fought for the championship belt in his weight class. If he were to have won the belt, he would have been classified as the best fighter in the world at his weight. I […]
View PostAmerican
Here is an awesome quote from my favorite author, Brian Zahnd. Enjoy! “To be born in America is to be handed a certain script. We are largely unconscious of the script, but we are ‘scripted’ by it nevertheless. The American script is part of our nurture and education, and most of it happens without our […]
View PostFreedom
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 2 Corinthians 3:17 When we are being overwhelmed by God’s Spirit we are typically only concerned about what The Spirit is doing in those moments. This, I believe, creates freedom. Freedom from everything else going on in our […]
View PostLife-on-Life Discipleship
Here are some great Life-on-Life Discipleship Tips. Enjoy! Rod
View PostOn Worship
When Israel was finally freed from the iron grip of Egyptian slavery, they got out of there pretty quickly before the Pharaoh had any time to change his mind . Exodus 12 tells us that these newly freed people did not even wait for the yeast to make their bread rise. Instead, they quickly packed […]
View PostA Worshiping David
David was a true worshiper. From a Shepherd to a King, he changed Israel.
View PostTough Conversations
My wife, Anna, and I are planting a church. Actually it is a site plant of another church, and we love it. Here is what we have: 1. We have excitement about what we are doing. 2. We have a desire to reach people for Jesus. 3. We have mentors who have gone before us. […]
View PostSin and Sacrifice
Leviticus Through Chairs
View PostGod’s Voice vs. Lies
It is important that we learn to recognize God’s voice versus lies. Sometimes we can discern what we are hearing by recognizing what is going on internally. One important thing we can do to help ourselves discern what we hear [in our minds(maybe from God), and from others] is to establish some principles of when […]
View PostWorship
“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” ~ C. S. Lewis God is God. And God is to be worshiped. May we take part in reveling in His luminosity.
View PostFishing
Fishing in Bible times looked like this: 1. One boat would cast a large net all the way to the bottom of a lake. 2. This large net trapped fish so that a smaller net could bring them in. 3. This fishing all occurred on ONE side of the boat. So in John 21:6 Jesus […]
View PostNo Longer Estranged
2 Samuel 14:14 But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him. Have you ever noticed that God is devising ways for people to not stay far away from him? He is doing it all of the time. Think about Moses being […]
View PostThe Fall
In Genesis 3 Adam hears God in the garden, notices his nakedness, becomes afraid, and as a result, hides. I believe we do the exact same thing as Adam. We hear God. We feel insecure about what He calls us toward. And so we hide. Or at least we reinterpret what He is saying to […]
View PostWhen God Speaks
When we read Gen. 1: 1-2 we begin to see some unique qualities in regard to what happens when God speaks. We notice that God’s response to a big chaotic mess is to speak. He sees something not as He would like it and so God speaks into it, and changes its DNA. When God […]
View PostIn The Beginning, Creation Part 3
Trees, on this side of Heaven and this side of Eden
View PostThe River – Dirt
Jesus tells a story of a farmer scattering seeds. How some seeds fall on the road and get eaten by birds, some fall among thorns and get choked out before they can grow up tall, and some fall in a pile of rocks where they grow up and then get burnt by the sun. But […]
View PostUncovered
Uncovered: The Truth about Honesty and Community. Here is what people (okay, one person) is saying: “This little book is dynamite — and for anyone imprisoned by shame, fear, and self-hatred, a little dynamite is exactly what is needed. Rod Tucker delivers the Good News, the message moralists despise and legalists hate. This is the […]
View PostGlimpses
When I, Rod, was a child my dad was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. We prayed for him. He went to the doctor. It was gone. I have a friend who had a slipped disc in his back. We prayed for his back. His back was fine. Maybe this was all God’s Kingdom being loosed on […]
View PostYou Become
Who are you in the Kingdom? Who will you become?
View PostThe River – Multiplication
Focusing on The River’s 2013 site plant on Lake Street.
View PostThe River Mentoring
The church that I work at takes a different approach to student ministries. We believe that students’ can best become disciples of Jesus through life-on-life mentoring relationships. Here is a video we shot to help cast this vision:
View PostLittle Children
Brennan Manning writes in his book, The Importance of Being Foolish: “To become a little child again (as Jesus enjoined we must) is to recapture a sense of surprise, wonder, and vast delight in all of reality. Look at a child’s face on Christmas morning as he enters the living room transformed by the midnight […]
View PostBlessed are the poor…
In Matthew 5:3 Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And in Luke 6:20 He is recorded as saying, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” There is something profound about the Kingdom of God or Heaven coming to the poor. […]
View PostBroken to Beautiful
A few weeks ago my wife, Anna, took an old jacket that no one would ever want to wear and made a beautiful scarf out of it. To me this idea was brilliant. She has taken old cans that anyone normal would throw away in a heartbeat and turned them into lovely pencil holders. She […]
View PostThe River – Kingdom Come
We are called to live in authority.
View PostHuman
Throughout Scripture and throughout our lives we can see a common thread – there is an Enemy (whether this is called Satan, the Devil, the serpent, etc.) who is fighting against humans. We are the only branch of creation that God made in His image, and this is precisely what makes us human. This leads […]
View PostThe River – The Last Supper
Jesus rose from the dead. He did this so that we don’t have to stay dead or even asleep for that matter. We can live! We can experience life to the fullest! But what does this mean? I got this idea from Brian Zahnd’s blog. Here is the link: http://brianzahnd.com/2006/04/the-last-supper/
View PostThe River – Wake Up
Watch the video teaching on The Last Supper used during the Wake Up sermon series.
View PostChange
Karl Marx has been credited with saying, “Philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; the point is, however, to change it.” I like to take this statement and change it up a bit. I say, Christians have only interpreted the church differently; the point is, however, to change it. There came a time, in […]
View PostJesus the Prophet?
Matthew 21: 8-11 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the […]
View PostCoins
“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’ In the […]
View PostThe River Student Ministries
The church that I work at takes a different approach to student ministries. We believe that students’ can best become disciples of Jesus through life-on-life mentoring relationships.
View PostEmbrace
Brennan Manning said, “The outstretched arms of Jesus exclude no one, not the drunk in the doorway, the panhandler on the street, gays and lesbians in their isolation, the most selfish and ungrateful in their cocoons, the most unjust of employers and the most overweening of snobs. The love of Christ embraces all without exception.” […]
View PostShut Up and Listen
Let’s talk about Job. Many theologians today argue that the book of Job was the first book ever written in the Bible. I find this incredibly interesting due to the intense focus on pain and suffering in Job’s life. Basically, this book tells the story of a man who is blameless and upright in God’s […]
View PostHoliness
Mechthild of Magdeeurg, a thirteenth-century mystic prayed, “I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me. If you want me to leap with abandon, you must intone the song. Then I shall leap into love, from love into knowledge from knowledge to enjoyment, and from enjoyment beyond all human sensations. There I want to remain, yet […]
View PostRemembering a Forgotten Grace
In a lifetime composed of falling short and trying to cover up mistakes, grace is a concept that is misunderstood and forgotten. Shame, the belief that one is the problem, creates a false pretense which makes it seem logical to systematically approach sin as something to be fixed. In ‘Remembering a Forgotten Grace,’ Rod Tucker […]
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