Holiness Reeducation

On the way into work this morning I saw a For Sale sign in front of a church building. It is church here in Chesterton that I had heard was having a hard time and about to close. It looks like that time has come. It is just a building for sale, the church isn’t […]

An increasing number of students earning a Masters of Divinity degree (typically required for pastoral ministry) are not going into traditional pastoral roles. Is this a a good thing? Is a bad thing? Is it simply descriptive of how our culture has changed? According to the Washington Post article only 41 percent of master of […]

This week was our annual gathering for District Assembly. All of those zany churches that make up the NW Indiana District gathered for a time of celebration, inspiration and accountability. When I say it like that, it sounds way more fun than District Assembly doesn’t it? This year instead of sharing reports about what is […]

Let’s start by talking about bras Back in December our church became the shipping site for Free the Girls. All the bra donations that are sent in to be used by the women in Mozambique (and soon to be other countries!) are shipped to our church. At first the boxes started showing up a couple […]

It grieved my heart this weekend to hear of the suicide of Matthew Warren, son of famed pastor Rick Warren. I have prayed for the Warren family this week, knowing a bit about their anguish and hoping for a comforting presence of God like they have never known. In wake of this tragedy there has […]

Every couple of months it seems I add another blog post looking at the difficult and very divisive issue of homosexuality and the church. Why do I keep coming back to this topic? Well I can promise you it isn’t because I want to drive us the reader stats for my blog. The main reason […]

“The more I consider Christianity, the more I found that while it has established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.” – G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy) I ran across that quote the other day while wrestling my way through JR Woodward’s book Creating […]

In an age of #hashtags, category tags on posts and buzz words galore, it is really hard to know whether categories and tags have any meaning, Is this simply another spin off of the latest meme or does it have real meaning? Over the past three or four decades in the North American evangelical church […]

Like many, I was shocked to hear this morning of the decision of Pope Benedict XVI to resign at the end of the month. For the first time in 600 years a Pope resigned from his office rather than holding on until death. Citing a failing body and mind that are no longer able to […]

The good people at Water is Life came out with one of the most brilliant ads I have seen in a while. In the video Haitians read aloud tweets of First World problems. The irony and contrast are laid out so brilliantly as to cut straight to the bone. If you haven’t seen it, check […]