In the movie Finding Nemo, the absent-minded sidekick is a blue tang fish named Dory. She is endlessly forgetful and relentlessly optimistic. She has one repeated principle for life, "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming." You could say she would agree that you have need of endurance (cf. Hebrews 10:36). We would do well to apply Dory's principle to our en...  Read More

One of my favorite places is Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I try to make an annual trip to enjoy all that this stunning landscape has to offer. There are amazing views, fantastic fishing, and the opportunity to experience the calm and quiet of being miles deep into dense wilderness, far away from the hustle and bustle of civilization.  Read More

Last Sunday was a full day with our regular service in the morning followed by lunch and encouraging church meeting. One downside I feel with those days is the splendor of the passage we looked at in the service gets eclipsed by the other updates and discussions in the meeting. Let’s return to some of those particularly glorious details.  Read More

A few weeks ago, I got a chance to talk to the kids Sunday school class for a few minutes about memorization as I will be helping them with their memory verses going forward. Rather than start right away with the first verse, I took this first week to encourage them that scripture memory is worth it and that even adults like me use lots of strategies to help them learn it and retain it.As we will ...  Read More

The concept of a “regulated free market” approach to ministry comes from Jamie Dunlop. The idea builds on the economic system where goods and services are developed and sold in accord to supply and demand. Have a valuable good or needed service? That assessment will be confirmed by demand. If no one wants to buy what you’re selling, either it isn’t needed or the concept needs more work. However, t...  Read More

Discipleship is about formation, not affirmation or information. We are instructed to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.” To be a fully formed and whole person means having rightly ordered thinking, rightly ordered feeling, and rightly ordered actions. In Norms and Nobility, David Hicks says, “The purpose of education is not the assimilation of facts or the retention of information, but the habitation of the mind and body to will and act in accordance with what one knows.” This is what commonplace discipleship aims to foster.  Read More

We are not in a financial position where we are desperate for year-end gifts to meet our expenses, but we are looking ahead to 2022 and beyond and asking the Lord to bless us that his way may be known on earth (cf. Psalm 67).  Read More