Michelle Van Loon

One of my favorite podcasts is Phil Vischer’s rollicking foray into pop culture and the state of affairs in the Evangelical church. Regular cohosts actress Christian Taylor and pastor/author Skye Jethani are joined (and sometimes replaced) by a variety of interesting guests.…

This quarter at Northern Seminary, I took a class for which I had low enthusiasm before I walked in the door back in September. In fact, the words “low enthusiasm” might be overstating it a bit. If it hadn’t been required…

The conversation around the relationship between those at midlife and the local church clicked into a higher gear last week with these two blog posts: At Thom Schultz’s Holy Soup: The Rise Of The Dones. “After sitting through countless sermons…

“How are you doing?” There’s a lot of different ways in which those words can be voiced ranging from a casual aside with no desire for an answer to the way the pastor of the church we’d attended for a…

In military terms, a retreat is the decision for an army to withdraw because they’re losing a battle. In Evangelical church circles, a retreat is a weekend packed to the rafters with activity, teaching and relationship-building. Jesus often retreated from…

If you attended a church service this weekend, you may have been sitting in a roomful of suitcases. There’s no way to tell what percentage of people in a given congregation are schlepping baggage from a previous negative church experience,…