From my recent e-newsletter – read to the bottom and check out the contest:  When you think of Jesus’ call to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20), what practices come to mind? Evangelism? Prayer? Service? Study? We speak of the importance of everyday discipleship mostly in terms of making sure we slot time for individual…

It was the first house I remember, but I still wonder if it was ever really home. And yet nowhere else I’ve lived has ever fully been my home either. The duplex was a cookie-cutter match for the dozens of other houses in the neighborhood. My parents were the first owners of the house, built in 1963.…

Once upon a time – and for most of Judeo-Christian history following – there were no Sunday School classes or parachurch youth programs that focused on transmitting faith from one generation to the next. There was simply the kind of lifestyle God prescribed in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. Certainly other forms of apprenticeship, and eventually, more formalized forms…

In 99 days, this painful, divisive election will be history. Who will we as followers of Jesus be after November 8th? As of this writing, I have a number of believing friends and acquaintances who are supporting Donald Trump. I have a number of believing friends and acquaintances who are supporting Hillary Clinton. And some who…

Some in shriveling churches have prayed a form of Ezekiel 37:1-14 for their congregations. The prophet Ezekiel was given a vision of dry bones, and as he spoke in God’s name over them, God supernaturally reassembled them into a vibrant living body. God told Ezekiel that the vision was about the return from exile of…

English is sprinkled with a few Yiddish phrases. Go to Einstein’s Bagels, and you use Yiddish to order a bagel and a schmear of cream cheese. If you trip over a crack in the sidewalk and call yourself a klutz, you’re using a Yiddish word to describe your clumsiness. 1970’s sitcom characters LaVerne and Shirley used the…