When we started ReCAST Church back in 2009, we had no employees.  Technically, I was paid full-time as the church planter/pastor, but I was paid fully by another church that entire first year.  Berean Baptist Church in Portage, MI, was generous and gracious to give us a great financial start! But now, fast forward to…

I am preaching on a passage in the gospel of Luke this week, where it is recorded that Jesus cast a demon out of a man in the synagogue in Capernaum.  It doesn’t happen in the Upside-Down.  It doesn’t happen in the ‘spiritual realm’.  It happens on planet Earth.  In Galilee, in the town of…

I fear that far too many American Christians have formed an opinion of their responsibility to the poor from experience or from political leanings.  I have had many conversations over the years about poverty that concluded with discussions of poor choices and drug abuse.  I have also spoken with people who have a shocking level…

Putting those words together in a blog title is part of my bold sense of humor.  As an unofficial reformed Baptist who would not baptize infants, I am including these two together at the connecting point of church growth. ReCAST Church has continued to grow.  It has grown in size as well as in depth.…

Last week my wife spent a few days near the Florida-Alabama border with several others ladies from the church.  The event was for women and was called Bible at the Beach with Nanny G (Nancy Guthrie for normal people). And while I missed my wife, I was glad for the time she was able to…

Every time another church is attacked I go deep into what ‘ifs’. As a pastor of a flock, I am called to care for my flock.  But the metaphor gets cloudy.  Am I supposed to wrestle with bears and lions?  Am I called in any sense to physically preserve my sheep and protect them from…

I have been a pastor for 20 years and am closing in on 100 weddings that I’ve officiated. And there a couple of trends I have seen in the past several years that I think are worthy of note.

Most weddings are now outdoors. I don’t have a STRONG opinion about this, but just an opinion. A church building is meant to evoke thoughts about the presence of God. I will be the first to admit that He is NOT any more present in a church than He is in a vineyard, or on a farm, or at an outdoor wedding venue . . .

Long before ReCAST Church ever had a Sunday gathering in Mattawan, we had spent hours and hours praying for the community. I began to work from a coffee shop there and I began to get to know people and even invited people to join us. Our goal was to be a church in a community that needed one.

One of the largest task of any leader is to clarify the answer to the question “why!?” I have been listening to the book “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Leif participated in many of the missions to regain the Iraqi city of Ramadi.

The Christian who believes the Bible is true, knows that this world is NOT the way it was supposed to be. We know we are frail. We know disease is real. We know we are dying. I start in this place, regarding the topic of holistic health, simply to set the field of play for this discussion.

I went through a yo-yo phase. I could walk the dog, I could rock the baby, and do the elevator. All of these are fairly entry level tricks, but I thought I was cool . . . If yo-yos could be called ‘cool’.

[11] so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.   I just finished a podcast series on the Satanic Panic of the 80’s and 90’s. I enjoyed listening in, because it was a trip down memory lane. The decades of the 80’s and 90’s were formative…