Articles
In 2020, I unearthed Grandpa.
He lived in a retirement home, and without warning, he interrupted a decade of silence with texts advertising discounted Nokia earphones from a third-party site and lamenting the Zambian pandemic response. And he wanted me to call.
Two-year-old me tottered over to the fridge and pulled out the lemonade—a plastic container with a swiveling lid to keep children like me from spilling. I wrapped my little arms around the jug and set out on my quest. Crossing the threshold of the kitchen, I journeyed down our carpeted hallway to the end of the hall where Mom sneezed and blew her nose.
King Saul hunted David across Israel, seeking to murder the man whom God had anointed as the next king. Yet, in a moment of divine opportunity, God led Saul into the caves near the Crags of the Wild Goats while his army stayed outside.
Our home almost killed my mom. It took years after she became ill for us to uncover the pitch-black mold coating our insulation. We later discovered that health issues from mold had triggered the previous owners to sell the house to us—a detail neither they nor their realtor disclosed.
For J.T. English, Sunday morning looks a lot like homecoming.
As the worship band’s last chord fades, Pastor English hops onstage towing a music stand. He settles his Bible and iPad onto the stand before turning his attention to the congregation before him.
You can tell a lot about a pastor from his vehicle.
When Pastor Stephen Davey parks at The Shepherd’s Church in Cary, North Carolina, his decades-old pickup truck reveals his personality. His license plate reads POIMENAS: “Shepherd.”
In recent years, churches in the US have emphasized the need to be relentlessly local. From choosing a local coffee shop over a chain café to serving in neighborhood elementary schools, this vision of equips every Christian to be on mission—in Sunday School and in Walmart.
Consider a couple caricatures: the lofty and somewhat oblivious professor, surrounded by weathered tomes in an ivory tower. Then, the pastor, passionately spewing both words and spit onto the unsuspecting first row, thumping a weathered Bible against the heavy wooden pulpit.
When I set up an appointment to interview Dr. Steven Mason, the president of LeTourneau University, I hesitantly expected to meet a glossy, rigidly driven bureaucrat. Instead of a stiff administrator, I met a very different man at the helm: a highly relational, modest, witty, and congenial believer.
Why would anyone willingly jump aboard a sinking ship? That question faced John Standard as he joined staff at Springfield Bible Church in 1983—right as the church was disbanding. Not only was John jumping aboard; he was jumping with his wife and newborn child. Why?
After faithfully serving for almost a quarter of a century at Autumn Ridge Church in Rochester, MN, it would have been easy for Julie Smestad to sit back and enjoy the fruit of her labor. Instead Julie seized the moment of and enrolled in Dallas Theological Seminary.
“Unprecedented” has become a common word in the COVID-19 era. Global culture has been forced to adapt to new necessities. Churches have been forced to change how they conduct worship; meeting in homes has gained popularity, and livestreams are now a regular part of Sunday service.