As I sit here at the local coffee shop, I have the privilege of having my daughter sitting beside me. She is listening to music on her phone and texting friends while I have been studying and writing this blog. She is now in high school. She is a freshman. Every glance in the proverbial,…
I could never imagine when I became a pastor, that I would be called upon to declare my personal stance on murder. Nor could I conceive of a cultural climate in which I would be pressed to verbalize my opposition to racism. These are two things that have felt so self-evident to me that I…
I must confess that I keep up with social media. And over the course of this lock-down I have observed phases of online content. There was the initial light-hearted phase where every other post had something to do with Corona Beer. Staying humorous, but getting more serious we went through the shopping and acquiring toilet…
It didn’t take long to figure out that Mattawan Consolidated School is the heartbeat of this small community. Back in 2009 I moved my family here from Portage with the goal of planting a new church that would be centered in the Bible as the Word of God, and motivated to give love and blessing…
Rather than add more content to an expanding body of opinions and speculation, I have decided to blog about 5 random points of gratitude that have nothing to do with COVID-19. 1. The Snow Drops are Up in the Woods by My House This is always the first sign of Spring around my house. The…
A glance over the headlines calls it COVID-19. Colloquially it is called Coronavirus. And it seems to be spreading. I have looked up the words pandemic and epidemic and neither word is entirely accurate yet. And further from reality are the words ‘plague’ and ‘pestilence’. I cannot imagine the latter word being employed by anyone…
Any conversation about Bible translation has the potential to bring up a lot of emotions. People who grew up in the church have likely become accustomed to a particular translation and they develop loyalties. Further clouding the issue is the way we naturally associate a favorite translation with people along the way. “Grandma loved that…
I grew up in a world of concrete good and bad. Wrong and right. Everything to my young developing mind was black and white. When I came to understand Christ and was saved through faith in His sacrifice, I went through a phase of systematically removing the bad and replacing it with the “good”. Out…
How in the world is it possible that my next sermon in the book of Romans arrives right on the week of the public hearings for the impeachment of a sitting president? I can only explain it as one of those things that I see as the hand of God. Some people believe in coincidence.…
Man, oh man, did John MacArthur irresponsibly back his way into a hornets nest! He apparently told Beth Moore (an evangelical author and bible study leader) to, “go home!” when asked to give the first thing that came to his head when her name was mentioned. First of all, let me just start by tackling…
10 years ago today I posted on Facebook “Don is calling tomorrow a pivotal day in his personal history.” I did not know then, just how true that statement would be. But I did NOT know just how misguidedly narrow that statement would prove to be. That first meeting of ReCAST Church has proven to…
I am currently auditing a seminary class that is covering the way that the church should interface with a post-Christian culture. It has been helpful to consider the role that the church should play, in a culture that is increasingly marginalizing the church as a primary influence. We live in a very divided culture right…
