How Are We to Be Angry and Not Sin? 

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How Are We to Be Angry and Not Sin? 

Anger is not a sin; it is a God-given, God-experienced emotion. Sin enters when our response to the felt emotion goes against showing respect and dignity to image bearers, such as ourselves. 

God experiences anger when Israel continues to return to idol worship and disobedience to their covenant (i.e., God’s boundaries he set up for the Israelite people to protect their relationship with Him and themselves). There are consequences to pushing against God’s boundaries such as distance from Him (i.e. Genesis 3:23-24). Many times in the Old Testament, we see God distance himself from the Israelites when they do not keep the covenant. However, He does not ever cease to offer an alternative response that would lead to restoration of the relationship. 

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A Trail of Trust

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A Trail of Trust

“You’re going to have another baby, and it’s going to be ok.” 

These are the words I read in part of a text message from my cousin in Spring of 2017, and I laughed (out loud). I literally thought, “Well, it’s happened. She has gone crazy.” She was sharing this with me in context of some things that she believed God was showing her personally, so this was not even her own random idea. She was telling me what God shared with her ABOUT me. Granted, her walk with God is extremely intimate, and I really should have listened to her. But I didn’t. I laughed and said to myself, “Nope. Not happening. Not in my plan.” 

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Riding the Wave

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Riding the Wave

One of the most frustrating things about feeling sad is that most people always want to fix sadness or make it go away. Their efforts also make it seem like we ourselves need to try to fix our emotion or make it go away when we are feeling the gray waves of sadness. In my experience, this labels my sadness as something wrong or shameful. 


In 2015, Pixar came out with Inside Out, a comedy-drama about the emotions that live inside us and how they interact with one another. As a fan of NBC’s The Office, I was so excited to hear that Phyllis Smith and Mindy Kaling were both voicing main characters, Sadness and Disgust. As I watched the movie, I saw that Sadness’ character seemed to be the antagonist at first. All the other emotions, especially Joy, became irritated with her interfering and “messing up” the day-to-day experiences that Riley had. Sadness and Joy ended up working together to make a pathway of healing for Riley. Inside Out painted a beautiful picture of the importance of all emotions, as well as the reality of feeling multiple emotions at once. The movie also pointed out a major flaw in our society’s understanding of emotions: that sadness needs to be fixed.

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Can We Have Confidence in Life's Surprises?

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Can We Have Confidence in Life's Surprises?

The emotion of surprise is different from the emotions we’ve discussed in our “All the Feels” series so far. Surprise is a bit more complex. The emotion of joy is consistently a comfortable emotion, while fear is consistently an uncomfortable emotion. Surprise, however, can be both comfortable and uncomfortable.

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Facing Your Fear

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Facing Your Fear

Fear. This is an emotion of which I am all too well acquainted. Now look, I am not talking about awe and reverence of God in this post, which is the way “fear” is sometimes used in Scripture. I am talking about a kind of emotion that is intense, sometimes paralyzing. I am talking about the heart-racing, sweating, shaking-in-your-boots kind of fear. Merriam-Webster defines it this way: “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.” 

The common denominator in all our fear moments is our thoughts. Our thoughts are sitting in the control center of our bodies—the brain. When we experience a situation that could trigger fear, our bodies go into a Fight, Flight, or Freeze mode. Our brains tell our bodies to tackle the source of the fear, run from it, or stay paralyzed by it. 

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Goodbye & Thank You to Pastor Robert Hargrove

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Goodbye & Thank You to Pastor Robert Hargrove

Pastor Robert has been an incredible part of Vintage Church leading our church both musically and creatively. He has faithfully served as an incredible shepherd to so many people within the life of Vintage Church, including his Music Arts Team.

Over the past couple of months, Pastor Robert Hargrove, Vintage Church’s Music Arts Pastor has been processing his calling to Vintage Church as well as New Orleans. After considerable prayer, Pastor Robert Hargrove and his family have accepted a call to become the Minister of Worship and Arts at First Baptist Church Frisco, TX. 

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Vintage Church Pittsburgh—Sending Pastor Sean & Family

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We celebrated the sending of Sean and Tiffany Englert to Pittsburgh to join Pastor Rob Wilton and the launch team this week. The Englerts have faithfully served at Vintage Church New Orleans in many different roles since 2008. Over the last year Pastor Sean has transitioned out of education and into pastoral ministry. Sean will serve as one of the pastors for Vintage Church Pittsburgh. This new Vintage Church will be planted in strategic partnership with the North American Mission Board’s SEND Network and Long Hollow Baptist Church.

"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest" (Matthew 9:37–38).

Of all the things that Sean and Tiffany would like prayer for as they transition the most important thing is for the “first salvation in Pittsburgh.” We’re dreaming of and asking for a harvest of 1,000’s in Pittsburgh, but at this time one of the most important things we can lift up over the next few months is for that 1st salvation. Will you join the Vintage Pitt Launch Team in praying for that 1st salvation?

If you’re interested in Pittsburgh, or partnering with Vintage Pitt, the upcoming Catch The Vision Tour July 31–August 2 is an incredible opportunity.

Vision Tour Purpose

  • Explore the city in-person to gain a better understanding of what it means to plant churches in an urban environment.
  • Meet church planters and see their ministries first-hand to explore potential partnerships.
  • See communities that are in need of churches to send a planter.

Register at Pittsburgh CTV.

We are amazed at all that the Lord has done over the last decade in New Orleans and are excited to see all He is going to continue to do in New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and beyond in the next decade. We believe that the best is yet to come!

What Is Joy?

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What Is Joy?

A quick google search provides these descriptions of joy:

  • “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness”

  • Synonyms: delight, great pleasure, joyfulness, jubilation, triumph, exultation, rejoicing, happiness, gladness, glee, exhilaration, exuberance, elation, euphoria, bliss, ecstasy, rapture.

We can agree there’s a difference between “joy” and “happiness," but how are they different? We’re not going to necessarily talk about those differences in this post, but I will be writing about happiness in a couple weeks, so hopefully the differences will be communicated between the two posts. 

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Baptist Friendship House Opportunities

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Vintage Church just finished a two week ServeNOLA series, looking at how we can continue to serve our city. This past Sunday, we had the Baptist Friendship House with us sharing about the ministry that they do in New Orleans. They specifically minister to the needs of homelessness and sex trafficking. We had the opportunity to interview Dr. Kay Bennett in our worship gatherings, who is the Executive Director of the Baptist Friendship House. The stories that she shared were both eye-opening and powerful. You can watch the sermons and interviews from the past two weeks HERE. 

Our prayer as a church family, is that our awareness has been raised of the needs in our city, and that our hearts have become burdened and ready to step in and partner with these ministries.  

Here are some specific next steps and ways to serve with the Baptist Friendship House: 

  • They are always taking donations for their Snack Pack bags that they give to those in need. The donations they take are protein bars, peanut butter crackers, fruit cups and vienna sausages. They can be dropped off at their location on 813 Elysian Fields Ave. New Orleans, LA 70117. 
  • They are also making backpacks to give away on Friday July 13th at their location at 10am. The next day, on Saturday July 14th at 9am, they will be hosting the event where they will be giving away 5,000 backpacks. 2,000 of them will go towards students going back to school in the Fall, 1,500 will be going to the homeless, and another 1,500 to sex trafficking victims. You can call them to volunteer in any capacity. 
  • An ongoing opportunity for women to serve other women in need takes place every week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9-11am. On Tuesdays they provide hot showers and skills training for women. Wednesdays they provide breakfast, group therapy and also pottery classes, and on Thursdays they have a Bible Study with lunch afterwards. They are also always taking frozen meal donations to go towards those lunches. 
  • Trafficking training and prayer walking is also available upon request, with flexible days and times for those who want to have more understanding and awareness. 

A few ongoing ways to stay connected to them is through their website, social media and saving their contact information:

  • Check out their website at HERE. 
  • Like their Facebook page at Baptist Friendship House to receive weekly updates on prayer requests and follow them on Twitter at @BFH_NOLA. 
  • You can also give them a call at 504-949-4469 to reach out about more serving opportunities throughout the year, and if you ever notice anything that seems to be suspicious towards sex trafficking, please call 888-3737-888.

How can you make an impact with foster care in South Louisiana?

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Interested in learning more about foster care and how you can make a difference in a child's life by becoming a foster parent or supporting foster families? Join Crossroads NOLA this Sunday at Vintage for an Interest Lunch. 

Sunday, May 20th at 12:30pm

Vintage Church (3927 Rayne St. Metairie, LA 70001)

RSVP to Pastor Matthew Weaver at mweaver@vcnola.com

Watch some stories from other foster families: