Author: Michelle Van Loon
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Gun-shy Committing to Church?
My friend Joy and her family relocated to a new state a few months ago. I checked in with her recently, and asked her if they’d found a church yet. There was a long pause before she answered. “Committing to a new congregation is a lot harder than I thought it would be. We’ve been…
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Meet the Pelican Project
Years ago, I attended a women’s Bible study where the leader would read a few verses, ask us how we felt about what the passage said, and then read the notes from her pink women’s Study Bible to us if something seemed unclear. We had wonderful prayer times and warm conversation. But the “study” part…
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Unburying that one “talent” I stashed
During the U.S. economy’s meltdown in 2008, I got on the phone with the financial advisor (let’s call him Frank for the purposes of this post) as the stock market was in what looked to a lot of us like a near free-fall. “I am watching the news every day and am freaking out,” I…
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The 2,500 Year-Old Battle Cry
We all heard the battle cry loud and clear on Saturday, October 27th. “All Jews must die!” the gunman said before he mowed down worshippers at Tree of Life (Etz Chaim) Synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 and wounding 6 more, including four police officers. The Anti-Defamation League reports a marked uptick in anti-Semitic incidents in the…
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You say ‘Horseface’, and I hear…
…every stick-and-stone word ever flung my way. Yesterday, our Tweeter-in-Chief lobbed one of his never-ending word grenades at a woman with whom he’d had a consensual intimate relationship, calling Stephanie Clifford/Stormy Daniels “Horseface”. We all know this wasn’t a one-off thing; he has a long history of giving opponents all sorts of demeaning nicknames, with…
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Pastor, does your church really need its own church building?
Not long ago, I listened as a pastor laid out his big dreams for a building of its own for his congregation. The church had been renting worship space from another church in the community, holding its main corporate worship service at another time during the week so as not to conflict with the host…