Thursday in Jamaica: the hugging lady and high school soccer matches

Today’s word was “salvation.”  In the sense, I think, of who is it that needs salvation?  We talked a lot about the role of Sunday morning worship in either serving the believers, or equipping them to go out to the rest of the week.  I just found that the way… Continue reading

Wednesday in Jamaica: Maroons and Blue Mountain coffee

Today’s word was ‘sacrifice,’ and our conversation over breakfast circulated again around Phil. 2.  My reflection is that acts of sacrifice are important…adopting kids, selling everything to move overseas, living on one income to spend more time volunteering, etc.  yes…perhaps we should do that more often as Christians.  But what… Continue reading

Tuesday in Jamaica: goats, cold showers and plantains

I slept like a rock.  The rain meant a cooler evening, and the constant humming of the fan drowned out noises.  The house doesn’t have air conditioning or hot water.  A water pump has to be turned on to get running water.  There’s no internet service.  If it was on… Continue reading

Is it time for furlough?

Being a missionary kid comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages.  Advantages include an ability to walk between worlds and validate people’s perspectives and diversity.  Advantages include a broader view of the world and a certain amount of self-sufficiency that contributes to success and independence.  Advantages include an… Continue reading

Sunrise reflections

“When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were building a temple to the Lord God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the hands of families and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as yo do, and we have been… Continue reading

Reflections on a trip to South Sudan

It’s about time to try to summarize my trip to South Sudan using a few key pictures of some favorite moments.  For a sermon I preached recently with more details about the processing of that trip, go here for the audio version or here for the manuscript.

Birds of the Nations

Pastor’s going on vacation…this means I get to preach for two weeks in a row.  And of course I get the last installment of the random “the Kingdom of Heaven is like…” parables told in Matthew.  Both an over-used and a misunderstood concept, I think.  Meanwhile, we haven’t talked much… Continue reading

Journey to Detroit 2015: What’s Your Story?

“What’s your story?” I was sitting at a pizza restaurant with a group of church leaders who until the day before had been complete strangers to me. But now, after 2 days of conversation and training, we were chatting in a much more familiar tone as we sipped beverages and… Continue reading

You’re Going Where? Part 2: to be or not to be…

During my senior year of high school I took a class called “Current World Issues.” We watched a lot of CNN. And the teacher tried to convince us to care about these news stories we researched and reported on each week. Unfortunately, in our teenage arrogance, we thought we knew… Continue reading