Michelle Van Loon

I’ve written a lot about the relationship between those at or beyond midlife with the local church. (Click here, here, here and here.) We Boomers and older Gen X’ers have shaped modern evangelical church culture. And many of us have grown increasingly disenfranchised from the…

We home schooled our children from 1992–2004. During those years, home schooling was not yet mainstream. Like many other families worried about running afoul of truancy laws, we paid our yearly dues to the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)…

At a social event last weekend, I ran into C., a woman I used to know when our kids were young. C. and her family were long-time, active members of a well-known megachurch in our area. Her nest had been…

I remember seeing an announcement a few years ago for the first Epic Fail pastors gathering, and wondering if the idea was an Onion-inspired joke. No pastors I knew – and I knew a lot of them from my time working…

“All’s fair in love and war” the old saying goes, but true love is focused on the good of the other and filters itself accordingly. During the past few hundred years, Western civilizations fought their wars in the name of…

I would not typically consider sharing a post someone left on my Facebook wall, but the words below from an old friend are timely in light of the mean-spirited words about suicide that have been written by a few bombastic…