This past year was a good year for reading for me. I enjoy reading and have started listening to audio books while I run or work out. For those of you familiar with strengths finder I have input, ideation and learner in my top five strengths meaning that I spend a lot of time…

Don originally posted this in 2015 – his 20th wedding anniversary.  December of 2025 found them celebrating their 30th anniversary!  And all these thoughts are still accurate… In desperation and youth Linda and I chose to get married 2 days before Christmas in 1995.  We were so very young.  I finished my final, final exam…

  I do not know why I have a Master’s Degree in Muslim Studies. Let me be clear. It wasn’t an accident, like I woke up one morning with a headache and a fuzzy recollection of taking a bunch of classes in Muslim Theology. What I mean is that I haven’t figured out God’s plan for…

I am back after a month long sabbatical.  I have been to the mountain top, and I have returned with many words of wisdom.  Or put in a less dramatic way, I am back after a refreshing break. God did impress upon me several things while I was away.  Some of them more personal in…

  Through the various stages of church planting, I have often had to dig deep and ask some tough questions.  Why start another church . . . in West Michigan of all places?  Where is this thing going?  Now that we have some stability, have we arrived?  Why isn’t there a good Mexican restaurant in…

Update January 2019:  This post was originally published in October 2015.  In 2018, God brought Sharron Sternbergh to ReCAST.  She has had an abortion herself and has been a certified counselor with Healing Hearts since 2006, a ministry originally started to minister to post-aboritve women.   She is passionate about helping other women experience true healing,…

  Every once in a while I get the chance to go to a professional conference or an afternoon lecture for pastors.  This past week Cornerstone University (where I completed my bachelor’s degree) had a conference for pastors on Mackinac Island at the Grand Hotel.  It was an amazing time away of reflection and networking…

  In light of entering my seventh year as the lead pastor, the board of ReCAST church decided to offer me a month long sabbatical and a bonus. I am so grateful for this opportunity to take the month of November to read, pray, and spend some time away in reflection. I do not know…

  A church is a gathering of people.  People need organization.  Pastor’s are either very organized or very not organized.  I am not very organized. So in the vacuum left by our associate pastor’s move to a new ministry and our office administrator’s move to South Korea, we had some huge gaps at the start…

  The new clothes have been purchased and are all lined up in the closet. The pencil top erasers are all ready to remove some rare mistakes. The trapper keepers are all stocked with lined and ruled notebook paper. Okay, maybe not trapper keepers . . . But some of you knew what I was…

  Way back on July 20, 2012, just moments after midnight, James Holmes walked into a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado armed to the teeth with the only goal being that he would kill people. After killing 12 and injuring 70 others his gun jammed and he walked out of the theater and surrendered to…

Why do we call it a bullseye?  Why not call the center of the target the bearseye?  Or the catseye?  I’ll let someone else google it and post the history of that word in the comments. But all of us know the target analogy, right?  We are shooting for something.  We desire for success in…