Author: Michelle Van Loon
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12 Questions We Like To Ask Church Leaders
You can tell only so much from a Sunday worship service or by mucking around on the church’s website. In most cases, if you’re a visitor, those things are the welcome mat. They are the public face of the congregation. At this point in our lives, if my husband and I make it beyond an…
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Inviting my new friend Judith to Chanukah
Chanukah begins at sundown on Sunday, November 28th this year. Just as we finish the last bits of those Thanksgiving leftovers, it’ll be time for latkes, the delicious, crispy fried potato pancakes traditionally eaten by many in the Jewish community. It is traditional to eat foods fried in oil for the eight night holiday, a…
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Reflections on The Cost of Discipleship: *This* Is What I Signed Up For?
When he joins the Church the Christian steps out of the world, his work and family, taking his stand visibly in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. He takes this step alone. But he recovers what he has surrendered – brothers, sisters, houses, and fields. I’m finishing up my journey through Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic The Cost…
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Reflections On The Cost of Discipleship – Climbing The Slippery Slope
To try to force the Word on the world by hook or by crook is to make the living Word of God into a mere idea, and the world would be perfectly justified in refusing to listen to an idea for which it had no use. –Dietrich Bonhoeffer Was I thinking I was trying to…
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The Unmaking of Our Biblical Womanhood
To my younger sisters in the faith: Perhaps you grew up in the church, and have chosen with joyful intention to continue in the same tradition or denomination now that you’re an adult. Maybe you’ve deepened your faith commitment as you’ve moved into your twenties or thirties. Maybe you’ve made a big change in your…
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Reflections on The Cost of Discipleship – Chapters 14-17
Tom Wolfe wrote an essay in 1976 called “The New Man and the Me Decade“. He described the narcissism he saw driving much of American culture at the time, noting the roots of the self-indulgence stretched back to choices made by the previous generation: “The saga of the Me Decade begins with one of those…